SaferProducts incident

Failure type

Fire / ignition

Incident narrative

SaferProducts.gov consumer incident report 20130204-9FE0E-2147459106. Severity: Injury, No First Aid or Medical Attention Received. Product: Amana ACO1860AS (Over the Range Microwave Oven). Incident: My 8-year old was playing in our living room when microwave suddenly turns on, he sees sparking inside and turns it off and runs upstairs to tell me. I kinda blew him off b/c I asked if he touched the timer, etc. and he said no. Kinda forgot about it in my rush to get ready. A few days later, I smell something burning when I heat up water. I assume it's the glass jar I was heating it in (thinking maybe it's getting old). Then a couple days later - I'm making popcorn when I hear a steady popping and see sparks in micro. When I take out popcorn, I smell melted plastic. There was something overheating in the top rood of inside the micro and it melted through a plastic cover. I had touched the top of the microwave roof and the burned plastic burnt my finger. I immediately unplugged it. I called Amana and they arranged for a technician to come look at it. When he removed the circular piece in roof of microwave - you could see it was burnt, that in fact a fire had been in that area and the microwave is shot. He says it can happen when 'grease' or 'grime' get in there. Well - the fact is this microwave has been kept impeccably clean and the circular part is very tight and not removable by a consumer (it even says do not remove). So there's no way to 'clean' that inside portion. This appeared to be a major fire hazard.