Fire officials speak out about dangerous ‘Chromebook challenge’ on social media

A dangerous social media trend is sparking trouble School and fire personnel across the country are warning parents about what s being called the Chromebook challenge What happens with lithium batteries is that they will reignite reported fire official Chief John Olivieri The greater part people do not know that so they ll bring it back into the house put it away thinking it is ok and then hours later we ll have a matter It s thought the challenge started on TikTok and has kids sticking metal objects like paper clips into laptop charging ports Firefighters say that causes devices to short circuit They overheat and can even catch fire You see in the videos when the laptops start to smoke and then once the batteries start to fail you ll see turbulent smoke pushing out at a rapid pace announced fire official Chase Hamilton And that puts the battery in what is called thermal runaway At that point the batteries are going to continue to overheat to where they could explode A New Jersey high school was forced to evacuate Wednesday when a trainee reportedly tampered with a Chromebook causing it to ignite That seemingly could ve caused a bigger fire commented a aspirant There were papers all around the place in the video A similar situation happened last year in Peabody leading to the evacuation of a middle school Leaders say a trainee was injured after two others intentionally tampered with a Chromebook First responders are urging parents to speak with their kids We don t want to put students at danger We don t want to put our first responders at peril responding to a scene that they really shouldn t have to So the message is parents please watch your kids They re serious implications for doing something wrong like this stated police officer Mark Minichini