SaferProducts incident

Failure type

Fire / ignition

Incident narrative

SaferProducts.gov consumer incident report 20180503-57DB5-2147388210. Severity: Incident, No Injury. Product: Betty Crocker 3 quart (3 quart Betty Crocker saucepan). Incident: I purchased a 3 QUART SAUCEPAN under the Betty Crocker name. On or around Feb, 2018, I was boiling water with the saucepan and left it running without realizing that there was no water left. When I went to retrieve the saucepan to move it from the kitchen through the dining room to the garage to stop the smoke accumulating all over the house, the BOTTOM FELL OFF THE SAUCEPAN with the separated bottom layer of the pan dropping onto the floor very close to my leg and feet as well as metal from the saucepan spreading all over and damaging a section of my tiled kitchen flooring as well as a huge section of my dining room floor from the little round aluminum balls from the saucepan scattering when the bottom layer of the saucepan separated from the pan. While the bottom layer fell onto the floor, the edges of the pan started catching fire. The company- Formula Brands is not willing to acknowledge the problem and below is their response: " warping and separation of an impact bonded base on a cookware (sauce pan/pot) only begins to occur at a temperature of 590C/1094F. If there is substance in the pot, the temperature of the pan/pot cannot exceed 125C/250F. The silver colour of the stainless steel will also change colour, depending how long the pan/pot is left heating with nothing inside; a blue or rainbow tinge along the bottom of the pan will appear if it has been left heating for a little while. If left heating empty for a long time, it will change to a brown/bronze colour. If your sauce pan is a dark bronze colour, then I am sorry to advise you that your flooring will not be c