E-bike battery caused fire that killed young journalist, officials say

The apartment building fire that killed a young man in Harlem on Friday was caused by the lithium-ion batteries that power e-bikes, fire officials said. He was the first death this year in New York City linked to the batteries, which were responsible for more than 250 fires and 18 deaths last year.

The man, Fazil Khan, 27, was an up-and-coming journalist. Days after his death, his friends, family and colleagues grappled with the unfathomable loss of their loved one to a battery fire – an issue that gripped the city and was exactly the kind of story he would have been into.

“This was a preventable death. It’s outrageous,” said Bianca Pallaro, a senior data reporter at The City, who was a friend and classmate of Mr. Khan at Columbia University’s journalism school, where he graduated in 2021 with a master’s degree.

Mr. Khan grew up in New Delhi, where he studied English literature at Delhi University and earned a postgraduate degree in journalism from the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, according to an obituary in The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit newsroom that covers with education. Mr Khan worked there as a data journalist.

He was recognized for his talent in coding and his enthusiasm for stories that spotlighted injustice, editors there said. He delved into the consequences for Arizona schoolchildren who received it suspensions due to poor attendance and revealed a cluster of universities where poor students paid more out of pocket than richer ones.

The fire that engulfed his building on St. Nicholas Place in Harlem on Friday started around noon, fire officials said, and injured at least 17 people. Firefighters rescued some people with a rope, rappelling down the side of the building. One man jumped from the sixth floor to escape the flames, a police spokeswoman said, and another suffered serious burns; both remained in critical condition Tuesday, she said.

In a third-floor apartment where the fire started, there were several batteries, some of which were charging, said Jim Long, a fire department spokesman. As the residents fled, it appears they left the door open, allowing the fire and smoke to escape into the rest of the building, Mr. Long said.

E-bikes and e-scooters have swept the city in recent years, embraced by commuters and delivery drivers. But the batteries that power them — often charged in apartments and sometimes exploding without warning — have introduced new danger to New York.

The city has launched trade-in programs to get unsafe e-bikes and batteries off the streets, and since September has required retailers to ensure that all lithium-ion batteries they sell meet certain safety standards. But for manufacturers, similar measures are voluntary, said Rep. Ritchie Torres, a Bronx Democrat who co-sponsored legislation that would set mandatory federal standards.

The bipartisan bill passed unanimously in committee last year and is awaiting consideration for a vote in the full House. “The crisis will only deepen unless and until the federal government acts,” he said.

Mr. Khan was pronounced dead the day of the fire at the Harlem Hospital Center, a fire department official said. On Tuesday, his body was flown back to India to be received by his mother and five siblings, according to his friend Paroma Soni, a reporter at Politico. His father died in 2022, she said.

Ms Soni remembered her friend as a dedicated reporter, meticulous both in his work and in his sharp personal style, with his enviable hair.

He had a strong sense of justice that he brought to bear in his reporting, Ms. Soni said, including a project in which he helped discover that one in every 200 children in New York City had lost a caregiver to Covid-19. It led to the introduction of a bill from the municipal council aimed at improving the safety net for children whose caregivers have died from Covid. Even on card game nights with friends, he was always self-appointed scorekeeper because he forbade “even the whispers of cheating,” Ms. Soni recalled.

Mr. Khan seemed older than his years, Ms. Soni said, especially because of his habit of peppering conversations with old-fashioned Indian idioms and reciting Urdu ghazals, poetry he also wrote and shared on Instagram. When he first moved to New York, he revealed that he never learned to cook, she said; she was surprised when he hosted a dinner to break the Ramadan fast with biryani rice and kebabs that he had taught himself to prepare. “It was the best Indian food I have ever eaten,” Ms Soni said.

Mr. Khan, a religious Muslim who prides himself on his ability to read the Quran at lightning speed, spoke to classmates about his goal to help his family leave India, where they faced discrimination, according to an obituary in Documented, an immigrant-focused news site. In a voice message that his elder sister Tanuja sent to his friends and shared with her permission, she described him as an introvert with strong opinions and excessive charm.

She then turned to her little brother: “We are so, so, so proud of you.”

Chelsia Rose Marcius reporting contributed.