Something in this setup caused the fire: modem, router, plugs
Says the uninsured tenant wanting to find someone to pay for the fire damage. She provided zero evidence they were actually the cause.
Although I would argue fitting things at floor level is dumb, its just asking it to gather dust and the customer to smother it with furniture. I could totally imagine a pile of laundry ending up covering it.
I know someone who was a cleaning fanatic, would vacuum several times a week, practically daily but never once thought to clean their Xbox 360 external power brick because out of sight, out of mind.
I've long thought all outlets should be ABOVE furniture level, this does seem to be the case in some countries. The whole idea of choosing aesthetically pleasing over safety is stupid.
My point is electrical devices can cause fires & that's indisputable
But generally its high voltage/current electrical devices that do, because low voltage don't have the energy to do so unless there an accelerant around.
The old "one spark can cause a fire" is obviously true, but in 99.9% of cases one spark wont. We rely on this fact as halogen light bulbs when they fail often explode, LED light bulbs its usually the smoothing capacitor that dries up and literally burns out. Electrical items are designed around burning out as a safe failure mode, because the rest of the item is designed to not catch fire.
Which is why it tends be the AC adapter where problems occur, as if its designed badly (such as a cheap Chinese USB chargers) then it may not have the same safety features, such as high temperature self extinguishing plastic casings.
