Sofia's Story - Woman dies in electric bike fire
Sofia Duarte, sadly died on New Year’s Day in a flat fire on Old Kent Road, in South Bermondsey. Fire investigators believe the cause of the fire is due to a converted e-bike’s battery bursting into flames in the entrance to the flat Sofia lived in. Here Sofia's mother tells the story of her tragic loss and warns everyone to be careful when charging and storing e-bikes and e-scooters.
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NewsTranscript
00:00 You know, one bike is one bike.
00:02 My daughter is my daughter.
00:05 And I lost my daughter.
00:25 She loves to go out with her friends, parties,
00:30 you know, everything teenagers like.
00:35 Sofia is in the room.
00:39 She sleeps because she works all night.
00:44 She goes to sleep about 4 o'clock,
00:46 and this happens at 5 o'clock.
00:52 What I know is the boyfriend sleeps as well.
00:56 The alarm...
00:58 The alarm was ringing and people were shouting his name?
01:02 Yeah.
01:03 But the thing is a dream.
01:05 When he wakes up,
01:10 he sees the smoker inside the room.
01:14 He wakes up Sofia.
01:16 He tells me, "Sofia, open the door."
01:22 And the smoker, black, comes inside
01:28 and he lost Sofia.
01:31 He tries to see where is Sofia, where is Sofia,
01:34 calls the name, but he doesn't see Sofia.
01:38 And he jumps to the window.
01:42 Approximately 1655,
01:46 London Fire Brigade Control
01:49 have received the first of 10 999 calls
01:53 to a fire on the Old Kemp Road.
01:55 Do you know if there's anybody inside the building?
01:57 Yeah, there is a people inside,
01:59 four of them, they just jumped through the window.
02:01 In under three minutes, the first fire engine had arrived
02:04 at that scene,
02:06 and they were confronted with a fully developed fire
02:09 that was running from the ground floor up to the second floor,
02:13 and flames were visible coming out of a window on arrival.
02:19 I wish what happened to my Sofia
02:22 don't happen with nobody more.
02:26 The investigation by London Fire Brigade,
02:29 fire investigation team,
02:31 has shown us that the fire started
02:34 in a lithium battery power pack from an e-bike.
02:38 At the time of the fire, the lithium battery power pack
02:42 was being charged in the hallway,
02:44 the main fire exit of the premises.
02:47 This meant that when the fire started,
02:50 unfortunately, as it developed so quickly,
02:53 it meant that people above the fire
02:56 were unable to exit the building safely,
02:59 which meant that they then had to try and exit
03:02 via windows from a second floor.
03:05 If she knows this is danger,
03:08 she talk with the person and says,
03:10 "Please, can you put this out?"
03:13 But nobody know how much is the danger.
03:18 (Music)
03:22 (Music)
03:25 (whooshing)
03:27 [BLANK_AUDIO]