Rana Novini reports.
A Bluetooth speaker filled a New Jersey bedroom with smoke and burst into flames, and the mother who caught it on video is telling others with the same device to get it out of their homes.
The woman said her daughter had been in her room listening to music with the speaker on her bed, not plugged in, and went into her mother's room to tell her the speaker was spewing white smoke.
"She came in casually and said, 'Hey, that thing is smoking,'" said Nichole Tatem.
Tatem said she thought her daughter was kidding, but went into her bedroom and saw the smoke. She said they didn't know what to do; her daughter grabbed an oven mitt and paper bag.
"I freaked out, like, what are we gonna do with it?" said Tatem. "It was so fumey. We have two boys, two dogs."
They threw the device in the bag and brought it out to the apartment stairwell, where the mother said the device "popped" and burst into flames. She called 911, and emergency crews responded to the home on Palisades Avenue in Cliffside Park.
The mother said she and her daughter doused the flames with two buckets of water and firefighters came and took the charred speaker away. She said no one was hurt and there was only minor damage to her daughter's mattress.
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"I had to take two buckets of water to put it out," said Tatem. "It was crazy."
The Cliffside Park Fire Department is investigating the make and model of the speaker and what could have caused it to spark.
"We're looking into the device from the manufacturer. We haven't gotten answers back from them yet," said Frank Poerio.
Poerio says the fire department has been aware of problems with other electronic devices, including exploding e-cigarettes and cellphones, but has never seen a portable speaker burst into flames.
The fire department has contacted the New Jersey Division of Fire Safety, and is waiting to hear back, said Poerio.
