SaferProducts incident

Failure type

Explosion / rupture

Incident narrative

SaferProducts.gov consumer incident report 20110910-38547-2147475468. Severity: Incident, No Injury. Matched catalog product: Kenmore 790.80323310. Source model text: 790. Incident: Yesterday evening (9/8/2011) I was using my Kenmore oven which is less than 1 1/2 years old (but was installed by previous homeowners when we purchased our home 1 year ago) to heat up chicken nuggets for my kids. I set the oven to 425 and cooked them for 15 minutes. After that I shut the oven off and removed them and then closed the door. I turned around to walk back across the kitchen and feed my kids and as I got over to them there was a loud pop that sounded like a gunshot that came from the oven. I went back over to the oven to open it and make sure there was nothing inside that could have exploded and when I did I saw that the center piece of glass in the oven door had completely shattered. Fortunately no glass burst into the kitchen or into the oven, but I am afraid that if the center glass on a fairly new range could just shatter for no apparent reason, then the other glass on the door that they used in manufacturing could shatter as well. In the meantime I can't cook in my oven and glass fragments and dust are coming out of the bottom of the door and falling into the warming drawer. It is terrifying to think of what would have happened if the other panes shattered as well. My children were all about 5 feet from the oven door.