His House Caught Fire. Then, His Community Showed Up.

A 16-YEAR-OLD’S LIFE CHANGED IN AN INSTANT ONE NIGHT AFTER AN E-BIKE BATTERY LIT ON FIRE, CAUSING HIM AND HIS FAMILY TO REBUILD THEIR LIFE AND START OVER.

*Giovanni Franco Ramos was a student in the College Now Introduction to Journalism class at the City College of New York.

On April 25, at Oliver Pimentel Cervante’s home in Queens, he woke to his mother shaking him in a hurry. 

Worried there was a fight or something had happened to his family, he ran to check on his loved ones outside. That’s when his mom caught him in the hallway and told him to calm down. Soon, he realized smoke was filling their apartment. It was coming from inside.

”My first instinct, I just grabbed my sweater. I didn’t even get anything else. Like, I had nothing on me. We just ran out,” Cervante said. What he would later learn was that an e‑bike battery in the basement had exploded.

 “I started crying and I felt horrible. It really hurt my heart,” he said, noting, “we managed to get outside at least.”

Outside, Cervante and his family waited for the fire department to arrive. As they stood in the cold, some neighbors were still trapped inside. One woman was desperately trying to get out. “She was about to jump till I noticed the firefighters at the corner of the street,” he said. “Finally, they had gotten there.” She was safely brought down and put into safety. 

After the fire had calmed down the Red Cross arrived, documented the situation, and took the names of Cervante, his family, and other people impacted by the fire. This wasn’t the only help Oliver and his family Cervante. His neighbors went to the supermarket and bought food for him and others. “They bought bread, coffee, a bunch of food. They prepared it for us. They put a table outside and started giving us food, drinks, coffee,” Oliver said. “We were hungry, tired, exhausted from everything that happened.”

The danger of these e-bikes isn’t secret. The New York City Fire Department advised recently, “Where possible, charge and store lithium-ion batteries or micromobility devices OUTSIDE. Do not charge them overnight, and do not block any exits. It can mean the difference between life and death.” 

New York City has taken action by creating a map of locations where residents can safely charge e-bike batteries. These stations, called swapping cabinets, were designed to “mitigate the risk of fires caused by lithium-ion e-bike batteries, which are often linked to the use of uncertified or low-quality batteries, improper charging in residential buildings, lack of safe storage spaces and educational gaps around safe battery handling”

Cervante’s situation mirrors many others this year, like when in late June a fire broke out from a lithium battery and a 48-year-old man died in the hospital after escaping from a bedroom window, it was the first reported death in 2026 related to a lithium battery, according to the FDNY. The FDNY has safety tips on their website for lithium batteries so that the public stays out of danger. Situations like Cervante’s may become more common due to the use of e-bikes increasing. Stopping lithium battery fires isn’t as easy as pouring some water on the flames. This makes putting out the fire more difficult and the batteries potentially more dangerous.

After the fire, Cervante and his family were able to stay at his elder sibling’s apartment for a short period. After they recuperated some of their losses from the blaze they relocated and moved into a house in Flushing, Queens. 

Following the fire, Cervante was able to get mental health help from his school and was put in therapy—which he said helped. Still, the fear from that night has stuck with him. Cervante noted that the doorbells stopped working about a week prior, making it harder for the families to even know that there was a fire. To get the neighbors attention, Cervante said, “we started screaming.” 

“Me, my mom, and my sister, people that were there out in the middle of the night,” he shared, “just started screaming at the neighbors, trying to get them out.”