SaferProducts incident

Failure type

Fire / ignition

Incident narrative

SaferProducts.gov consumer incident report 20211208-A9579-3518636. Severity: Incident, No Injury. Product: Vicks VWM845 (Vicks Warm Mist Humidifier Model: VWM845). Incident: Your Complaint The VICKS warm mist humidifier in my 3yr old son's room caught on fire last night just before bedtime. He alerted me saying ?it smelled weird? and indeed it smelled like burning electrical wire. The humidifier would not turn off, and as I turned the knob back and forth, I could see a candle-like flickering inside it as the wires burned. Unplugging it stopped the small fire but the smoke continued to pour out. I rushed it to our garage and took it apart to see what happened and make sure it was not still burning. In the images link below, you can see the black box behind the knob had ignited the wires next to it. Thankfully this happened at 7pm and not in the middle of the night. The unit is less than a year old and used pretty infrequently. This was pretty scary as we have the same unit in our 6mo old's room. I immediately turned that unit off and took it out of his room. I contacted VICK's Consumer Relations department today. They apologized and asked that I send them the burned unit, and would replace it. This unit is not recalled but obviously there is some concern. The ref for my case with them is [REDACTED]. Images of the unit can be seen here: [REDACTED]