SaferProducts incident

Failure type

Fire / ignition

Incident narrative

SaferProducts.gov consumer incident report 20200227-74A32-2147374592. Severity: Incident, No Injury. Product: Thor Kitchen 30" Gas Range HRG3026U (Thor Kitchen 30" Gas Range). Incident: 3 problems: 1)While using both the oven and burner for several hours cooking a holiday dinner, the knob for the burner became stuck. Had to forcefully turn knob to get it to shut off, required pliers. Contacted manufacturer with safety/warranty concern and after several emails back and forth they stopped responding to me and never resolved. Has happened several times after unit is used for 2-3 hrs. this happened within warranty, range was 6 month in use, no resolution or acknowledgment from manufacturer. 2)The broiler stopped staying lit, would slowly leak gas into the oven, which would ignite into a fireball when the door was opened. Repair technician explained the igniter was failing, which skewed the voltage used by the gas valve. The igniter still glowed, and gas would still flow, but not enough to keep the burner lit. this began to happen once unit had been in service for 2 years, just out of warranty. 3) Meanwhile, the sound of the oven burner igniting got louder and louder until it became a thumping whoosh, a large quantity of gas igniting almost a like small explosion. While baking, a very loud buzzing noise came from nowhere and the lights in the oven dimmed. Obviously something wrong, happened to be standing there luckily and immediately shut down the oven. Oven would no longer operate, closer inspection revealed the igniter and burner to be severely degraded and melted. the buzzing noise seems to be from arcing electricity, the steel around the igniter has been melted by a very high temperature, and the igniter was effectively welded to the burner. I can only gue