SaferProducts incident

Failure type

Fire / ignition

Incident narrative

SaferProducts.gov consumer incident report 20201205-9119C-2147367674. Severity: Incident, No Injury. Product: Westinghouse WHT0571 or WHTO571 (Westinghouse ceramic heater, model WHT0571 or WHTO571, black). Incident: My furnace went out. My boyfriend and I used two Westinghouse ceramic heaters, model WHT0571, to heat my house until the furnace could be repaired. When one of the Westinghouse heaters stopped working, I gently tapped it on the floor and it started again. The second time it stopped, tapping it didn't work to restart it. It smelled like burnt plastic and never worked again. The second heater worked well, until it, too, stopped yesterday. I tapped it on the floor, as I had done with the first heater. It started up again. A few hours later I noticed a strong smell of burning plastic. I didn't want to pick up the heater because that would shut it off. Once shut off, it might never start up again. So I pushed it across the floor a few inches. I saw a burn mark on my bathroom floor. The size of the burn mark was between a nickel and a quarter. I needed this heater to continue working to prevent my water pipes from freezing during the below-freezing temperatures we were experiencing here at night in Minnesota. So, rather than shutting off the heater, I decided to frequently push it a few inches across my bathroom floor to prevent any one area from being burnt. I already knew my entire bathroom floor needed replacing because of the initial burn mark, and I didn't want my pipes to freeze, too. Sometime before noon this morning, I smelled a horrible burnt plastic smell that permeated my entire house. I pushed the heater a couple inches and found the worst burn mark of all. If I hadn't been home I believe the heater would have started a fire.