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

A dangerous social media trend is sparking trouble School and fire authorities across the country are warning parents about what s being called the Chromebook challenge What happens with lithium batteries is that they will reignite noted fire official Chief John Olivieri Most of 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 issue It s considered 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 explained 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 candidate reportedly tampered with a Chromebook causing it to ignite That supposedly could ve caused a bigger fire noted a pupil 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 Representatives say a apprentice 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 exposure We don t want to put our first responders at hazard 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 explained police officer Mark Minichini