SaferProducts incident

Failure type

Fire / ignition

Incident narrative

SaferProducts.gov consumer incident report 20180322-15EDC-2147389080. Severity: Incident, No Injury. Product: Sharp KB6524PK (Drawer microwave installed in the custom cabinetry). Incident: On the day in question my wife was heating up a cup of coffee in the Sharp Insight-Pro drawer microwave. Suddenly there was a strange noise and the microwave stopped working and the display panel went dark. Shortly thereafter my wife noticed smoke issuing from the top of the microwave near the display. I went and turned the power off at the breaker (it had not been tripped by the incident). Even with no power to the unit the smoke continued to increase. When it was obvious that there was a fire inside the unit, I unscrewed it from the cabinet and with my wife's help we carried the unit out onto an outside concrete porch. Smoke continued to increase in volume and it was apparent that the fire was still active and increasing in intensity. With the aid of a power driver I was able to unscrew all the cabinet cover retaining screws and slide the cover off. The back of the microwave area was in flames. I extinguished the flames with a garden hose and waited for the unit to cool down before inspecting it. I do have video of the unit smoking while on the patio and my wife got video of the flames and burned up electrical connections. I was unable to upload the video since the "add files" was not working.