It’s been over a year since Scott Peden woke up in a hospital bedblack with burns and bandaged all over his body, yet he knew how lucky he is to still be alive. He managed to escape the fire in his house, the newspaper reports.
He very quickly realized that the person sitting by his bed was his mom, Glenda. She had to inform him that the accident claimed the life of his beloved family. “I still can’t understand what happened. I lost my whole family, everything, in a matter of minutes.” stated the man now trying to warn others from the danger of old lithium batteries.
The young family had to work hard to pay all the bills. Scott’s mom wanted to help, she bought her son an e-bikeas he worked shifts and could not rely on bus travel. Unfortunately, the battery was stolen from his bike when he went shopping.
“A new battery was £600 (€722) so when I found one on eBay for £300 (361) I thought it was a bargain,” he explained. Two days after the purchase, however, it exploded with such force that it caused a huge fire in which his wife Gemma, 8-year-old daughter Lilly, 4-year-old son Oliver and their two dogs were killed.
During the fateful night, the couple woke up to an explosion. “The stairs were engulfed in flames, the walls, the railing, everything was on fire. I knew we had no chance of getting down. I tried to shout for help from the window, but no one came, so I jumped into the back gardenwhile I broke my heel on impact,” he recalls.
The Cambridge man tried to get back into the house, but to no avail. He therefore returned to the window from which he jumped in order to convince his wife to jump with the children as he did. “I heard Gemma scream, ‘I can’t get out,’ and then there was nothing,” he described the worst moment in his life. After the arrival of paramedics and firefighters, he saw how they carry the body of his daughter out of the house, as a result of which he fell away.
Scott was taken to the hospital where spent four weeks in a coma, as he had extensive burns in several places on his body. During treatment, he overcame pneumonia, cardiac arrest and infections three times. After waking up, he remembered all the details of the day that turned his life upside down. “We had so much ahead of us and I am afraid of this new life that awaits me now. I don’t even have photos to remind me of them, everything I owned was destroyed.” said the widower sadly.
“At Christmas, when people buy e-bikes as gifts, I ask people not to buy used batteries,” Scott confided. “We had smoke detectors, but because of that was a lithium battery, we had no chance. I lost everything in a fire and have to start over. They must be stricter regulations regarding the resale of batteries, they should be inspected and certified,” emphasizes the bereaved man.
