Could be. I'm betting that one of the lithium batteries ignited while on the charger overnight.
I posted this on another thread, but it bears repeating here. (See: Once the fire started, it was too late for many on board the Conception)
When a LIPO goes up, it happens very quickly and without warning. It's a very hot burning, hard to extinguish fire that puts out dense clouds of toxic white smoke. It's possible that, even with a watch occurring on schedule, the fire could start and quickly get out of control. I'm talking seconds here, not minutes. So, even if the E exit weren't blocked, the odds of the passengers finding their way out would be almost impossible, especially with panic setting in.
Here's the real danger in a situation like that. As I wrote, consumer-grade LIPOs have the protection circuit. The packs w/o the circuit are considered hobby-grade. You can charge hobby-grade LIPOs without the circuit, but it requires the use of a smart charger. This could be in the form of a human being, as was the case in the early days of R/C model LIPO usage. (circa-2000) Or, you can use a smart charger that monitors all the cell voltages and adjusts input to each cell accordingly. There are no consumer-grade smart chargers.
Since consumer-grade LIPOs have the protection circuit, the charger can be a dumb charger that simply uses a pre-determined schedule to charge the batteries. This is what all modern consumer-grade electronic devices use.
Here's the catch. If you use a hobby-grade LIPO with a modern dumb charger, it almost guarantees that, at some point, you'll have a LIPO conflagration due to cell imbalance. Here's the double catch. There is no way to visually distinguish a good LIPO that has the circuit from the cheap chicom knock-off w/o the circuit.
Could you please dummy down the lithium charger info for the technically challenged among us?