Crown Heights High-Rise Fire Kills One, FDNY Points to Lithium Battery

A fire that tore through a 12th-floor apartment at NYCHA's Albany Houses in Crown Heights left one person dead Friday night, and fire officials believe the blaze started with a lithium-ion battery. Emergency crews responded to a report of an explosion at the Brooklyn public housing complex around 7 p.m., and found the apartment filled with smoke and a person inside.

That person was transported to a hospital, where they were pronounced dead, according to fire officials cited by ABC7 Eyewitness News. FDNY officials believe a lithium-ion battery started the fire, though the exact cause remains under investigation, the station reports. The Albany Houses development, built in 1950, consists of six 14-story high-rise buildings with 824 residential units, according to background information on the complex.

A Familiar and Deadly Pattern in NYC High-Rises

Fire safety researchers say lithium-ion batteries can fail through a process called thermal runaway, generating extreme heat and toxic gasses with explosive force capable of blowing down interior walls before igniting intense fires, per the Fire Safety Research Institute. That violent chemical reaction helps explain how a 12th-floor apartment could fill with deadly smoke so quickly, leaving little time to escape in a tall public housing tower.

The Crown Heights fire follows a troubling pattern across the city this year. FDNY officials had investigated 282 lithium-ion battery fires citywide as of late August, putting 2026 on pace to surpass 2025's total of 292 such fires, according to BigNY.com. Fatalities from these fires had actually been dropping, falling from 18 deaths in 2023 to six in 2024 and just one in 2025, before a June Queens apartment blaze recorded the year's first fatality, according to the New York Daily News.

Rules Meant to Keep Batteries Safe in Public Housing

NYCHA's Electric Micromobility Policy, which took effect in March 2024, allows public housing residents to keep UL-certified e-bikes in their apartments but restricts them to charging one device at a time. The policy also bans extension cords and prohibits charging batteries within five feet of heat sources or exit doors, according to the housing authority's guidelines. Whether the device involved in the Crown Heights fire met UL safety standards, or whether it was being charged in violation of NYCHA policy, remains an open question.

Separately, New York City's Local Law 39, which took effect in September 2023, made it illegal to sell, lease, or rent electric micromobility devices and lithium-ion batteries lacking certification from accredited safety labs like Underwriters Laboratories. Local Laws 49 and 50, enacted in September 2024, further gave city enforcement agencies power to padlock retail shops that repeatedly sell uncertified batteries. In 2023, federal and city officials also announced a $25 million grant to build outdoor e-bike charging hubs across 53 NYCHA developments, aiming to move risky charging out of residential units entirely, though it is unclear whether that infrastructure has been made operational at Albany Houses.

Another Entry in a Grim 2026 Tally

The Crown Heights death adds to a string of lithium-ion battery incidents Hoodline has tracked across the city this year. In July, a 48-year-old Queens tenant died after a three-alarm basement fire caused by an e-bike battery entering thermal runaway during indoor charging. In April, a battery fire filled the Brooklyn Public Library's Williamsburgh branch with smoke, underscoring how uncertified or modified battery packs keep triggering emergencies well beyond residential settings.

Crown Heights itself has seen fire trouble before: in October 2025, five people were injured and families displaced after an early morning residential fire in the neighborhood. The latest tragedy at Albany Houses illustrates the tension city officials have wrestled with for years — public housing residents' reliance on micromobility devices for transit and delivery work, weighed against the extreme fire risks of charging high-capacity batteries indoors. Despite certification laws, NYCHA charging rules, and multimillion-dollar investments in outdoor hubs, total battery fire incidents in New York City remain near record highs in 2026, and the exact cause of the fire that killed one person on the 12th floor of Albany Houses is still under investigation.