SaferProducts incident

Failure type

Fire / ignition

Incident narrative

SaferProducts.gov consumer incident report 20161227-240AB-2147408852. Severity: No Incident, No Injury. Product: HP G6T-1C00 (Black five year old laptop). Incident: We purchased an HP Pavilion laptop (Model G6 Serial No. 5CG150093K) approximately five years ago. Tragically, it literally blew up Thursday December 22, 2016. The havoc it caused in our kitchen/family room was quite extensive. It was plugged into the outlet. Had just booted up with no apps running. My daughter, [REDACTED], heard a pop (she was sitting about 10 feet away with the PC directly in her vision and a minute later the laptop left the countertop in an upward flight, flipped over 180 degrees in the air then landed on its top and the battery pack was on fire lying on our granite countertop. Pieces of battery, copper, and burning ash with some chemical too spread over a 20 foot square area. The next thing she did was to put out the fire even though she was in shock from the explosion that had just taken place. She successfully did so, and managed to avoid burning herself in the process. If she had been in front of the PC she would have been badly burned and if not home our house could certainly have burned down. There was extensive damage in the kitchen which we are still finding two days later. Our hardwood floor has many deep burn marks, the stainless fridge and dishwasher are damaged chemicals, and our floor was covered in copper, ash, acid, etc. Finally, there were burn holes discovered in our handmade cashmere Persian rug. We had Seattle KIRO7 TV here that evening for a story which they are still investigating before airing. It appears a battery recall for this model was only for 2013-16 and was voluntary, but we never received an email or letter about this issue