A fire that started in an electric vehicle charging area at the New Roc parking garage on Tuesday, May 5 destroyed seven vehicles, including some of the city’s electric shuttle buses, officials said.
A technician working on city-owned vehicles spotted fire coming from an EV charging station used by the city’s CircuitNR shuttle service around 2:20 p.m., New Rochelle Fire Chief Andrew Sandor said.
“He saw a fire and tried to put it out but was unsuccessful so he ran across the street to the firehouse and started ringing the doorbell,” Sandor said.
Firefighters encountered a heavy cloud of intense smoke when they arrived at the five-story garage on LeCount Place. Fire rapidly spread from one vehicle to the next, completely engulfing two of them.
Firefighters ventilated the stairwells of an adjacent apartment building and children at a daycare center across the street were told to remain inside.
The technician who alerted fire officials to the blaze suffered minor burns.
The cause is being investigated, and it hasn’t been determined whether a lithium-ion battery might have malfunctioned, Sandor said. It wasn’t immediately clear how many of the CircuitNR shuttles were destroyed.
The batteries have been linked to hundreds of fires and dozens of deaths in New York City in recent years. In 2024, 277 fires were started by lithium-ion batteries and 268 the year before, according to the FDNY. During that time, two dozen fatalities were linked to the batteries.
The CircuitNR vehicles debuted in 2019 as a free, on-demand shuttle option for passengers looking to get around downtown and points south and east. The service is a partnership between the city and Circuit, which also operates in the Hamptons, the Jersey Shore and New York City, according to a 2019 announcement.
Thomas C. Zambito covers energy, transportation and economic growth for the USA TODAY Network’s New York State team. He’s won dozens of state and national writing awards from the Associated Press, Investigative Reporters and Editors, the Deadline Club and others during a decades-long career that’s included stops at the New York Daily News, The Star-Ledger of Newark and The Record of Hackensack. He can be reached at tzambito@lohud.com
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: New Rochelle garage fire started in EV charging station. See damage
Reporting by Thomas C. Zambito, New York State Team / Rockland/Westchester Journal News
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