A Chromebook burst into flames inside a classroom at Berta Weathersbee Elementary School in LaGrange, Georgia last Thursday, burning a student and sending the entire building into an evacuation. Teachers moved the affected class out first, and other students left the classroom safely, according to officials. The child's parents then took the student for immediate medical care, though officials have not confirmed the extent of the injuries or the student's current condition.
The fire broke out on August 27, as first reported by FOX 5 Atlanta, which said the laptop caught fire inside a classroom at the school, located in Troup County, according to officials. School officials evacuated the entire building as a precaution, and the local fire department inspected the school facility afterward. Principal Lonnie Thornton sent a letter supporting the injured child and family, per the letter, but officials have not confirmed what caused the Chromebook to catch fire, nor said whether they have inspected additional laptops in the building.
A School Built Around One Device Per Student
Berta Weathersbee Elementary is a Title I school serving roughly 250 to 270 students in prekindergarten through fifth grade, according to SchoolDigger. The school sits within the Troup County School System, which runs a 1-to-1 technology model that issues a Chromebook to every one of its more than 12,000 enrolled students across 19 schools, per the district's own social media posts. That scale means a single device failure can ripple through a fleet the IT department already manages alongside staff laptops and classroom smartboards.
Whether this particular laptop failed because of a battery defect, a faulty charging cord, or something else entirely remains an open question. Fire officials and school administrators have not said which of those explanations, if any, applies here, and it is unclear whether the district plans to pull or inspect similar devices across its student fleet, as other school systems have done after past incidents.
A Familiar, Alarming Pattern Nationwide
Lithium-ion battery fires in schools are not new, and neither is the scramble that follows one. In October 2019, Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools in North Carolina pulled 20,000 Chromebooks from classroom use after a laptop smoldered while a student was using it, according to WFMY News 2, which noted technicians advise checking devices for swelling or bulging as an early warning sign. That same month, Montachusett Regional Vocational Technical High School in Massachusetts recalled all of its student-issued HP Chromebooks after a laptop battery caught fire inside a student's backpack on a school bus, per CBS Boston, with officials pulling every device out of an abundance of caution.
Regulators have stepped in before, too. Back in December 2013, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and Google recalled roughly 145,000 HP Chromebook 11 power chargers after the agency received nine reports of units overheating, melting, and causing minor burns and property damage before the recall was issued.
One Possible Culprit: A Viral Social Media Trend
Fire officials elsewhere have also flagged a specific, deliberate cause behind some classroom laptop fires: the so-called #ChromebookChallenge, in which students insert paperclips or mechanical pencil lead into USB or charging ports to trigger short circuits and thermal runaway. The Eastchester Fire District issued an alert about the trend in May 2025, warning that short-circuited lithium-ion batteries can emit intense heat and toxic vapors, per UL Research Institutes. Whether tampering played any role in the LaGrange fire has not been established, and officials have not said so.
The broader numbers suggest these incidents are becoming more common regardless of cause. A March 2026 study from the National Institute of Standards and Technology estimated that consumer lithium-ion battery fires in structures have grown roughly 10% per year since 2011, with nearly 198,000 structural fire incidents tied to the technology, and researchers cautioned that existing databases likely undercount the true frequency of these events. Just six days before the LaGrange fire, a laptop battery suffered thermal runaway and ignited aboard an American Airlines flight that had originated in Atlanta, burning a passenger before the plane landed safely, according to KIRO 7, which reported federal aviation regulators logged 89 verified aircraft incidents involving lithium batteries in 2024, a 16% jump over the prior year.
For now, families at Berta Weathersbee Elementary are left waiting on answers the school has not yet provided. No cause has been confirmed, no additional inspections have been announced, and the child's condition has not been disclosed.
