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There are phone calls home to mom that college students never want to make.
And then there’s the one placed early Saturday by Point Park University sophomore Aidan McFarlane, 19, barefoot, barely awake and frantic, as he realized his battery-powered electric scooter was ablaze in his studio apartment.
Billowing smoke was between his bed and his exit.
“Fire! Fire! Mom, there’s a fire! I don’t know what to do!,” he said he told her.
No one was injured in the second-floor blaze inside Keystone Flats on Third Avenue, a privately owned off-campus building Downtown.
Listening on the other end of Saturday’s phone call was Aidan’s mother, Diane McFarlane of Wilkes-Barre. She told her son that his first call should be to 911, not her.
But as mothers often do — even as her son took the advice and dialed Allegheny County 911 — she left nothing to chance by calling 911 in her county, Luzerne, about 270 miles by car from Pittsburgh. Call-takers there contacted emergency dispatchers in Allegheny County and verified that help was on the way.
“I just called her because, in my brain, she would know exactly what to do,” Aidan told TribLive on Monday. “She really did.”
McFarlane, who is a striker and winger on Point Park’s soccer team, said he uses an E-scooter to get to soccer practice on the South Side. But the vehicle that caught fire Saturday had not started for a month, and was not connected to a charger.
“I wake up to hearing sizzling, like the sound of the Fourth of July, like fireworks and firecrackers. I see the color orange,” he said. “So, instantly, my first thought is to grab water and put the fire out.”.
It only made the flames worse.
Firefighters arrived to an audible alarm going off in the building and an evacuation in progress, according to Pittsburgh Public Safety spokeswoman Cara Cruz. McFarlane had gone door-to-door on his floor urging residents to leave.
“The exact cause of the fire is still to be determined by the Fire Investigation Unit, but the initial investigation points to the lithium-ion batteries in an electric scooter that catastrophically failed,” she said.
E-scooters and other motorized forms of transportation are wildly popular with young people on and off campuses. But complaints about their safe operation and fire risks associated with lithium battery storage have led to bans.
On Monday, Boston College announced that it will ban E-scooters and other electric transportation devices, including hoverboards and electric skateboards, from campus as of Dec. 22.
Officials including Vice President for Student Affairs Shawna Cooper Whitehead explained why in a note to the Chestnut Hill, Mass. campus.
“In recent weeks, Boston College administrators have become increasingly concerned about the use of e-scooters and other electric transportation devices on campus, especially in regard to the health and personal safety of riders, pedestrians, and building occupants,” they wrote. “Many faculty, staff, and students have reported near-collisions and limited access to facilities because of scooters, and recharging lithium batteries in such vehicles has resulted in numerous fires around the United States.”
Students at BC and other campuses nationally have also been hurt from e-scooter falls, they added.
The incident involving McFarlane occurred in privately owned housing off campus, and thus Point Park would not be involved in how the scooter was stored, university spokesman Lou Corsaro said.
“We do not have a policy on e-scooters as we had previously not received any info on the potential for fires with them,’’ he said.
Aidan’s mother could not be reached for comment, but her Facebook page carried a photo of the charred E-scooter.
“Never thought it could happen. Crazy weekend,” she wrote. “So grateful for everyone that assisted.”
Bill Schackner is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Bill by email at bschackner@triblive.com or via Twitter .
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