SaferProducts incident

Failure type

Fire / ignition

Incident narrative

SaferProducts.gov consumer incident report 20200227-22166-2147374587. Severity: Incident, No Injury. Product: Amana AER5823XAS1 (Amana Electric Stove/Range). Incident: We had a small electrical fire in the kitchen which turned out to be due to our Amana (Whirlpool) range being sold without a protective panel which would have housed electrical contacts. One of the erroneously exposed electrical contacts at the bottom/rear of the range apparently came into contact with the back of the plug while it was plugged into the wall. The heat from the resulting energy transfer melted part of the rubber plug housing, caused a wire to completely sever and melted some of the nearby parts and a pile of ash was produced. Luckily no injuries or further damage. I went to a home improvement store to get parts and, while there, looked at some similar Amana ranges. All of the ranges in the store had protective panels protecting the electrical contacts which ours did not. I called Whirlpool for the part and they quoted a price but I reminded them that the part was never included and should have been, they agreed to ship the panel.