Wonder what battery was that?!
http://theage.com.au/victoria/exploding-battery-leaves-150k-damage-bill-20130709-2pndq.html
ok... who was it? spill it! i know your here!
lol just kidding... thats crazy.
note to self: do not squeeze funny looking LiIon
I imagine that the floors were either wood or carpet, which might explain why the fire spread?
About 2 years ago a similar thing happened at a hobby/model shop in Aus as well, a new and unused Li-Po battery burst into flames on display and others around it caught fire as well, luckily it was during business hours or it could have been a lot worse if it wasn’t spotted early.
Camberwell ... Hmmm who is in Camberwell ?
Might have to check out CPF ...
Wonder what battery it was ? Trust FIRE , Ultra FIRE , Prairie FIRE , no maybe House FIRE ...
Woah, how hot would it have been to be able to start a fire without a spark?! My guess is a wrongly charged unprotected Li-ion with too much current.
I wonder if it was anyone on the forums that this happened to.
Wow a lipo battery just sitting there started flaming? That scares me as I have lipo batteries sitting at home while I’m away for school.
Puffy (swollen) Lipos are common with the R/C crowd, and so are fires.
Discharge rates of 25C or more are common in flight, as are 5C recharge rates, so their batteries are really stressed.
Also I suspect that there may be more R/C people than flashaholics, as they play with cars, boats, helicopters and planes, and all we play with are photon blasters.
But at-least the lipos just burn and don’t explode like metal case lithium battery so that make them less dangerous for personal use.
Just need to store them in hermetic metal box to avoid house fire.
That would be a homemade handgrenade, dont do that!
There is a lot of energy involved, if you encase it, it will build up pressure..
LiPo storing cases do exist, but those have venting holes and are tough built.
Thanks for the tip ! But I thought that without oxygen the fire will go off rapidly ?
You won't have "Fire" once the oxygen is depleted, but the chemical reaction will have already begun and it will be creating massive amounts of gas. The gas will pressurize the container, and it WILL eventually burst. Then oxygen will be re-introduced and the fire will begin again. All over the room (and probably other rooms since the container will have exploded through walls).
This is worst case scenario, of course, but a warning - DO NOT STORE LithiumIon/LithiumPolymer cells in a completely sealed enclosure.
PPtk
Less dangerous ?
You guys need to youtube ...
And the rate of the reaction increases exponentially with pressure… nothing like a little positive feedback to liven up your day…
Then its a bad thing to keep them inside flashlights ? Batteries can be so dangerous if you are unlucky enough to get a bad one or misusing it, rather scary.
Do you recommend fireproof-bag for storage ?
It sounds like he squeezed it while it was charging. Is that the case?
What a horrible accident. 
Its the fire in one room that did the damage. Fire can start for many reasons….cigarettes, electrical shorts, etc., etc. Can’t see that the cell is some big villain here although it was the cause.
Inside a flashlight is a bad place to charge a Li-Ion cell. I nickname charging flashlights ‘pipe bombs’.
For storing and discharge the risk is much lower.
The highest risk of problems is during charging. Li-Poly packs can be trickier than Li-Ion because they are less tolerant to overdischarge (often causes internal gassing/bloating), which can make subsequent charges even more dangerous.