The Montreal fire department is now warning us against charging devices overnight because of the fire hazard of lithium batteries.
Updates from September, 2024 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Kate
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Kate
If you thought things couldn’t get worse for St‑Henri, it’s just been named one of the coolest neighbourhoods in the world by Time Out.
Ian
Well with the current rents it’s not like it can gentrify much further…
DeWolf
There’s a weird vibe in St-Henri which isn’t quite the same in other parts of Montreal. The gentrification happened very suddenly and very quickly, and it’s particularly consumerist and detached from the history of the neighbourhood. Compare that with many parts of the Plateau which gentrified more gradually. Duluth still feels the same as it did 20 years ago. Even Mile End has roughly the same feeling — and many of the same people — as it did in the past, despite all the changes. But St-Henri has changed completely and in a way that doesn’t feel great.
Josh
DeWolf: My sense is that Verdun gentrified similarly suddenly.
Joey
Not that what @DeWolf says is wrong, but we’ve been talking about St Henri gentrifying for at least 25 years…
Ian
I used to live at Ste Marguerite and Beaudoin in hte early 90s, I remember when the first condos started going in then suddenly all those mysterious warehous fires that allowed for more and more condos popping up like mushrooms in the ashes. I was down on Notre Dame a couple of years ago and noticed my favourite diner had turned into a fusion deli with $25 sandwiches. Last summer I was down by St Remi and Notre Dame needing a quick bite to eat and even Jamaican patties were selling for 5 bucks each. Even Bar Courcelle has been an anglo hipster bar for years. Fattall Lofts is barely hanging on & Traxide closed. The old hood ain’t what it used to be.
Ian
Pardon, on Ste Emilie between Ste Marge and Beaudoin 😉
Poutine Pundit
I lived in St Henri in the mid-90s, and it was a grim neighborhood of cracked sidewalks and run-down buildings. Notre Dame was nothing but tanning salons, pawn shops, empty storefronts, and third-rate casse croutes that sold wrinkly brown fries dripping with rancid cooking oil that hadn’t been changed in years. I can’t believe anyone would want to go back to that. Many of the changes have been positive and have taken place gradually over the last 25 years.
I have a friend who worked on these top 20 lists, and he said the science behind them was generally “first 20 things we can think of or that look interesting on google.” The fact that Plaza St-Hubert made the global Time Out cool list last year leads me to think there’s not much thinking behind this list either.
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Kate
As DeWolf reports in a comment below, the city is quickly changing its noise rules for concert venues although whether this can save La Tulipe is not yet clear.
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Kate
Jean-Talon will be blocked at Pie-IX as of Wednesday as work on the blue line extension gets serious. Blockages at Viau and Langelier are coming soon too.
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Kate
Manon Massé is speaking up vigorously against the plan to construct a new Hydro‑Quebec transformer on the Grande Bibliothèque block.
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Kate
Nine million dollars of taxpayer money have gone into supporting the Presidents Cup golf tournament taking place on Île Bizard. Quebec chipped in $6.5M of the sum by decree, justifying the expense with promises of economic spinoffs and tourism publicity.
La Presse’s sidebar on those spinoffs suggests they’re not exactly a known quantity and may be kept secret by the government.
The amounts chipped into this tournament in other years by Australia have also been kept secret – and American states don’t chip in at all. This is hilariously bad but somehow governments get away with massively junketing our money like this.
And the city’s been roped in for $1 million in traffic and security control – traffic woes being the sole spinoff most of us will see.
jeather
I know you mock people complaining about traffic in general, but in most cases there’s a benefit for Montrealers that offsets the short (or medium) term inconvenience — bike lane users are Montrealers, Montrealers will, eventually, be happy that the roads are repaired, etc. This doesn’t seem to be a positive for the city in any respect.
Meezly
Golf is so gross. Not only does it take up huge swathes of land, it’s probably one of the most, if not the most, resource-draining sport/recreational activity.
Joey
Not directly related to this but my growing assumption is that all major events – sporting or otherwise – can basically shop around for a host city/state until someone coughs up huge dollars, with the middle eastern petro-dictatorships establishing the minimum required subsidy. So if Quebec doesn’t cough up for the Presidents Cup and Montreal doesn’t cough up for F1, some other jurisdiction will come through and we’ll just disappear from the global whatever circuit. I’m not saying this is a good practice or a bad one, only that it seems to be de rigueur – large sports and culture promoters have figured out that they can make huge bank from governments before even selling a single ticket or ad slot.
Kate
jeather, I don’t mock people complaining about traffic, but rather, terminology like “headache” and “nightmare” applied to traffic by the media.
Meezly, also it’s been exempt from laws against pesticides and herbicides because the men prepared to spend thousands of dollars a year to belong to fancy golf clubs want the course to be manicured to the max, and are willing to use their clout to get politicians to intervene to allow toxic chemicals to continue to be used to that end.
Joey: I agree completely.
Joey
@meezly and @Kate you can be sure that the last drop of water to nourish the entire SW of the United States will irrigate some post-apocalyptic golf course
Tim S.
I never really got golf until I went to Scotland where the entire landscape is basically a golf course, and people just go outside to a patch of vacant land on an evening and whack a few balls around. Since then I’m amused/despairing about how much effort people put into diligently recreating what is basically waste land over there.
SMD
I’m with George Carlin on this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4w7H48tBS8.
Kate
SMD, that’s great, but it also reminded me of his role in Dogma as a Catholic archibishop who golfs.
Orr
@Tim S. “waste land”… or natural habitat?
Joey
Golf is a good walk spoiled.
(The origin of the quip remains a mystery, but all you need to know is that it was so bang-on it is typically misattributed to Mark Twain.)
Uatu
Interesting because golf courses on the south shore are closing down or reducing their size. St. Lambert has condos and a rehab hospital on their course. I don’t know if it’s nine hole now. La Prairie is closed and will soon be turned into a new subdivision. That one was surprising because it was a very popular golf course among the locals. Even the cheap driving range across the way closed down and that was there for probably 50yrs.
Kate
When I was a kid, my cousins lived in a house close to the edge of a small golf course in St‑Lambert. When we visited, while the adults drank tea or beer and watched TV, we sometimes wandered over there, on the other side of the railway line. I see on Google Maps that the golf course is still there, or most of it is.
I don’t think we understood that we could get a golf ball in the head if somebody was playing, but we never did.
Tim S.
Orr, true. What’s listed as “waste land” has always carried value for humans as well, whether for grazing or foraging or small game hunting or whatever. And apparently golf. But generally unmaintained, in an otherwise intensively manicured country.
Uatu: are you thinking of the municipal course in St Lambert? if I’m not mistaken, the land to the east of it, towards St Georges, was actually school board land and never had golf on it. Anyways, both St Lambert golf courses are open for cross-country skiing in winter, so I hope they stick around for that reason.
Uatu
I’m referring to the one that borders Brixton park. According to the website it’s nine hole (with the ability to play 18, but I dunno how they do that ). The part towards Tiffin is now condos and a rehab hospital and I remember that used to be part of the course because I used to see golfers strolling around.
Kate
Uatu, that’s the one I was thinking of. My cousins lived on Merton back then.
JaneyB 20:43 on 2024-09-25 Permalink
I didn’t know that overnight was a problem or that there have been so many fires. I guess I could put a timer on the plug.
dhomas 04:01 on 2024-09-26 Permalink
The problem is using cheap, uncertified chargers. But I also suspect cheap, uncertified devices like escooters. Most modern phones are pretty safe, if they are not physically damaged. And many recent phones have “adaptive charging”, to protect the battery from overheating which is not only a fire risk but also affects battery longevity. A tip for buying chargers (or anything else electronic) online: make sure it has certification, at least UL but preferably CSA. A lot of garbage sold on Amazon does not have these certifications. These devices are potentially dangerous and might even be cause for insurance claim refusal. I don’t understand how they are even allowed to be sold here.
Kate 08:45 on 2024-09-26 Permalink
It would help if the fire department could divide up these battery fires by type. I’m still going to be charging my iphone at night most of the time.
dhomas 09:06 on 2024-09-26 Permalink
I think the risk is pretty low. Consider the teenage and adult population of Montreal (people 15 and above) as 1.5 million (the census numbers put it at 1,492,525). Let’s say each of these people have a mobile phone (not all will, but some will have a smartphone and a tablet or laptop, for example, so I’ll count the full 1.5M). Let’s say not all these people charge their phones every day, but let’s say maybe 300 out of 365 days per year. That would mean about 450M charge cycles per year. And of those charge cycles, there were 40 fires, according to the SIM. That’s 0.09 fire events per million. The number is so small that is it almost negligible. And that’s not even considering that we don’t have a breakdown by type of device: smartphone, tablet, laptop, ebike, escooter, electric cars, etc. Lots of things use lithium batteries. I wouldn’t be too concerned, but we should still educate folks on proper care for their electronic devices. For example, if your phone has a bloated battery or if the outer casing has been damaged to the point of exposing the battery, don’t charge it. Some regulation on selling appropriately tested devices would also help. Like I mentioned above, Amazon and other sell a ton of questionable stuff that is not certified by any authority.
walkerp 09:57 on 2024-09-26 Permalink
One would think the fire department would be better at risk assessment.
Joey 10:00 on 2024-09-26 Permalink
Kate, if you are running iOS 16, which you probably are if you are using an iPhone 8 or newer and have done a software update in the last two years, your device will automatically stop charging if the phone is either too hot or too cold.
Blork 10:20 on 2024-09-26 Permalink
Yeah, my understanding (based on reading about this in multiple places for several years) is that the risk is very low for simply charging a phone or iPad, especially the newer ones that prevent overcharging (as dhomas mentioned). The greater risk comes with using the wrong charger or a cheap off-brand charger, or if you changed your battery for an off-brand battery.
Same applies to e-bike batteries. While they shouldn’t be left to charge overnight, the greatest risk comes from using the wrong charger (or a damaged charger) or if the battery itself has been damaged. Also risky is using home-made batteries or batteries that come from off-brand and/or unverified sources.
dhomas 11:44 on 2024-09-26 Permalink
Here’s an example of a no-name charger sold on Amazon catching fire:
https://www.amazon.ca/gp/customer-reviews/R1LD5PCTF62IE7/
You can see in a photo review that this charger has zero certification:
https://www.amazon.ca/gp/customer-reviews/R8YVRXI0WTO6Q/
It should have one of these two markings on the device itself, to be certified “safe”:
https://www.testandmeasurementtips.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/csa-ul.jpg
Ian 13:40 on 2024-09-26 Permalink
@Joey Samsung phones shut off charging if too hot or cold, too.