Mashpee Mother Badly Burned After Hoverboard Explosion
MASHPEE (CBS) - A Mashpee mother is recovering from painful second and third degree burns after a hoverboard started a fire in her home. The toy actually didn't even belong to her family - it was borrowed from a friend. It had been charging for about 40 minutes Saturday night.
"As I'm walking around the corner of the stairs I heard this missile. It sounded like a missile coming in for a landing. Then an explosion and my whole bottom floor started shaking," Leah Robinson recalled.
She panicked; four of her kids were home with guests over too.
"I ran down the hallway and she was yelling fire, fire! I looked and there were flames shooting from underneath the door," Robinson said.
Across the room from the flaming hoverboard, the blinds were already melting.
"That's all I could think of, is if we were asleep. We'd have no family. Our family would be dead. Our house would be gone," she said.
Leah's kids and their friends were safe, but she was badly hurt. She'd tried to move the device - dropping it as it burned her hands. One of the smoldering batteries stuck to her foot. Now she wants to warn other families about the popular toys.
"The companies need to step up and find out why these things are exploding. I can't live in fear that something is going to happen or I'll never have anything. I won't own anything. But I will never ever buy a hoverboard."
The Consumer Product Safety Commission has received more than 300 reports of hoverboards overheating or starting fires in the last three years. In 2017 two sleeping Pennsylvania girls were killed when a hoverboard started a fire in their home.
