SaferProducts incident

Failure type

Fire / ignition

Incident narrative

SaferProducts.gov consumer incident report 20211101-9CAA4-3484798. Severity: Injury, Level of care not known. Product: KitchenAid (Manuf by Whirlpool) KDTM354DSS0 (KitchenAid Dishwasher). Incident: Our KitchenAid dishwasher caught fire after we went to bed (we set it to come on after a 2hr delay). Fire was recognized by house pet who alerted us. Upon arrival to the kitchen, the unit was smoking with smoke stacking up at the ceiling. I removed the dishwasher from cabinet and secured the power source. Post-incident review shows the fire was contained within the door panel and combustion evident at the control module. Also, it appears that multiple class action lawsuits against manuf (Whirlpool) have already been fired and 'won' yet they are still selling units AFTERWARDS that have KNOWN BAD COMPONENTS. How in the world do they get away with this? I contacted them today and the Whirlpool QA rep told me something to the effect of, "Failures happen. Haven't you ever had your car break down?" (and it was in the pejorative...not nice). There's no way for her to know I used to run a QA dept for a major DoD aircraft remanufacturing line and later ran said line. If any of my QA reps ever used those words with my customers, they'd find themselves serving beans in the cafeteria in less time than it took me to utter those words... It is unknow if door panel is fire rated to withstand internal combustion but another quick review on the net shows this not to be the case (i.e. bbq'd dishwashers/kitchens). Minor smoke inhalation injury. Possible death if power had not been secured.