An iPhone sparked a devastating fire, family says. They want Apple to pay

Cathy Finley plugged her iPhone 6 into a charging cord in the living room and went to feed the goats, CTV News reported.

Not even a half-hour had passed when she returned and saw smoke coming from the British Columbia, Canada, farmhouse, she told the publication.

The blaze was put out within an hour, News 1130 reported, but it caused significant smoke and heat damage that led to the demolition of the structure.

Finley told CBC the October 2016 fire could have been worse.

“I remember thinking, I’m glad it didn’t happen last night when we were all in bed,” she said.

A fire investigator said it appears that “the phone or charger generated enough heat to ignite the leather chair and notebook and start the fire,” according to News 1130. Finley told the news station that while authorities can’t say the phone caused the fire, “they can identify the phone as the origin of the fire.”

Officials later clarified that the official cause hasn’t been determined, CBC said.

Finley and her family were able to get a $600,000 insurance payout, CBC reported, but the insurance didn’t cover all of the costs — particularly the lost revenue from their farming business.

They began building a new home last August, but Finley worries that they won’t have the money to finish it.

“We might lose this house that we are building with our own hands,” she said.

Finley reached out to Apple last February but tells News 1130 she’s been getting the runaround.

“They were saying things to us like: ‘We are going to make this right. I promise we will do everything can as soon as we can to help you guys’,” she said, “But by October they really shut down.”

Finley and her husband, Ian, tallied the family’s uninsured losses and came to an additional $600,000, CBC said.

Apple told CTV News it’s looking into the claim but has not yet analyzed the phone. The Finleys told the publication that the device is in the possession of their insurance company, which is working on the case with the company.

Meanwhile, the Finleys have gone public with their story, and say they may have to leave their community if they aren’t compensated, CTV News said.

“We are not asking to get rich from this,” Ian Finley told CBC. “We just want to be able to stay.”

This story was originally published February 28, 2018 at 8:00 AM with the headline "An iPhone sparked a devastating fire, family says. They want Apple to pay."