Hello, Irony: Samsung Note 7 Battery Factory Catches on Fire

It’s the kind of irony that takes serious script work to bring together in a TV show, but for Samsung it’s real life: The factory that makes the faulty batteries that led to the exploding Galaxy Note 7 caught on fire. Luckily no one was hurt, so it’s totally OK for us to poke fun at Samsung’s latest misfortune.

Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 battery factory catches fire

The fire broke out in the waste storage area at the Samsung SDI’s Tiajin factory in China. That just so happens to be where defective Note 7 batteries were being stored.

Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 was supposed to steal away Apple customers ahead of the iPhone 7 launch, but instead became the center of a serious safety threat when the phones started catching fire. Several people were injured and property was destroyed thanks to the combustable phones.

The Note 7 was banned from flights because of the fire risk it posed, and Samsung ultimately had to recall the phones and stop production. Samsung eventually confirmed the cause of the fire was a battery defect that could lead to catastrophic failure.

Samsung SDI said the fire was minor, according to Reuters. “Minor,” in this case, is likely a relative term because it took 110 firefighters and 19 trucks to put the fire out.

Company spokesperson Shin Yong-doo said most of the factory is running normally. We’ll have to go with “normally” in the relative sense because there were 19 fire trucks working to put out the battery fire.

It’s possible the waste containment system wasn’t up to the task, or that Samsung didn’t expect the batteries to catch on fire—you know, like they did in the Note 7. Regardless, it sounds like the fire is out now and the factory is up and running making more (hopefully less combustible) batteries.

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