iPad Catches Fire in Australian Vodafone Retail Store

Bob Seger may have sang about “the fire down below…” But now, customers in a Vodafone store in Canberra, Australia have experienced the iPad fire down under.

MacRumors:

A Vodafone retail store in Canberra, Australia was reportedly evacuated earlier this week after an in-store demo iPad “exploded”, filling the location with smoke and sparks, reports News.com.au. While no one was harmed during the incident, the iPad reportedly emitted the sparks from its charging port as firefighters were called to the scene to handle the situation.

While an Apple representative has reportedly visited the scene to investigate the fire, the company has declined commenting on the incident.

Early reports identified the device involved in the incident as an iPad Air, but that has since been changed to refer to the incendiary tablet as simply an “iPad”. (The device in the photo above appears to lack the narrower side bezels that would be an indicator that it was an iPad Air.

There have been previous incidents with Apple devices catching fire, as a woman in China suffered eye injuries when her iPhone 5 caught fire while she was on the phone. Two other incidents reported recently involved electrical shocks, as two users in China suffered electrical shocks while charging their iPhones, one of the incidents resulted in the death of a woman, however, both incidents involved unauthorized third-party charging adapters.

Chris Hauk

Chris is a Senior Editor at Mactrast. He lives somewhere in the deep Southern part of America, and yes, he has to pump in both sunshine and the Internet.