The New York Police Department published a social media warning, including images of burning bedspreads, to prevent people from sleeping with their phones nestled beneath their pillows. Police uploaded four photographs of pillows with holes burned in them when a cell phone beneath them overheated and caught fire. Fire chiefs have previously warned that placing a charging phone between a mattress and a pillow might cause the battery to overheat, perhaps resulting in an explosion or fire.

The cell phone was left on the bed, according to Hamden, Connecticut, fire chief David Berardesca, who talked with NBC. “These devices need areas to be ventilated.” “It is recommended that you leave these devices on a hard surface to allow the heat to dissipate.” When the batteries heat up, they may melt or explode, causing a fire. He was speaking after the evacuation of a 15-year-old’s home around 4 a.m. when his bed caught fire as a result of a charged cell phone.

Ariel Tolfree, a 13-year-old from Texas, was also fortunate to avoid major burns after her Samsung S4 phone caught fire under her pillow while charging. Tolfree’s father, Thomas, indicated that the phone was probably slid beneath the pillow before overheating in 2014 while charging near her bed. “The whole phone melted,” he explained to Fox 4. “The plastic and glass. “You can’t even tell it was a phone.”

The NYPD released four photos, one of which featured Tolfree’s bedding. A spokeswoman stated that the tweet was a general safety reminder rather than specific to any one event. At least two of the images appeared to be from the United Kingdom; one of them was uploaded by Leicester-based parent Dwayne Blanchard in November last year.

Blanchard described how his son Brandon had left a cell phone beneath his pillow, waking him up to a smoke alarm and discovering his bed on fire. In another case, Kent resident Holly Hewett, 25, awoke to find her Samsung phone had begun to sizzle while she slept. The device began sparking as soon as she took it up, and the battery became larger and melted through the plastic rear cover as she removed it from her bedroom, according to the Kent Messenger.