00:00Rodney Mulder is rebuilding his home in Albany from scratch.
00:06A year ago he woke in the night to find the house alight.
00:10I jumped out of bed pretty quickly, went to the door.
00:13By then already the flames had gotten within like a metre of my bedroom door.
00:22So any chance of going out through that way was well and truly cut off.
00:27He managed to escape through the bedroom window.
00:30But by the time the fire is arrived there was nothing left to save.
00:35Completely destroyed. There was nothing I could salvage.
00:38Mr Mulder's wife and children weren't home but were impacted almost as hard.
00:43For a period at least it destroyed us. It took everything out of us.
00:48The fire was thought to be caused by a charging laptop.
00:51Now the Albany resident is rebuilding on the same site.
00:55But doing everything he can to make the new house safe.
00:59What I'm aiming to do is a kind of like a fireproof box is where we would charge our devices from.
01:10It'll be constructed with fire resistant cement fibre sheeting.
01:14This is where we'll be putting the fire box in this area here.
01:19It's an issue being felt across the state with nine structure fires in the past 12 days alone caused by lithium ion batteries.
01:27It's a pressing concern for firefighters.
01:30So this is our breathing apparatus which we use to enter smoke or toxic filled rooms.
01:36Whilst batteries are being charged is to always monitor the battery.
01:40Batteries are known to go into thermal runaway whilst being on charge.
01:45But it's also quite not well known is that there's been a high percentage of fires this year with batteries that have just been stored and not on charge.
01:55Even with a storage box, Mr Mulder says his family will only charge their devices when someone is home.
02:02is home.
02:03is home.
02:04is home.
02:05is home.
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