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Nearly Had An Electrical Fire Today...
Topic Started: Jul 21 2009, 07:49 PM (204 Views)
jgoo
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Administrator
I went into the nursery earlier today to grab the stroller, which was sitting in a corner next to a tall lamp that takes one of those 3-way light bulbs. While getting the stroller, I just barely bumped the plug for the lamp and a huge spark shot out of the outlet, the outlet plate and the lamp plug fell out, exposing the inside of the outlet, and the spark continued for a second and then burned out. I thought for sure that I was going to have to grab the fire extinguisher and order Kassandre and baby outside. Luckily it didn't get any more serious than that.

The right prong for the lamp is charred, the outlet plate is charred where the spark occurred, and the exposed inside of the outlet is slightly charred. Kassandre's mother, who redid some of her own outlets not too long ago, is going to fix it for us. Quite scary to say the least, though. I have since dismantled the lamp and am going to send it down to the dumpster my next trip down.
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LWpianistin
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HOLY CARP!!!
Glad it wasn't any worse!
And how are you today?
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jon-nyc
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Cheers
Wow, that's unusual.

In my defense, I was left unsupervised.
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Lisa
Junior Carp
Scary! We've had similar things happen twice. Once was a lamp from Pottery Barn - it was our main reading lamp in the family room and we used it for hours a day. One day, out of the blue, it just started smoking (thankfully we were home). We unplugged it and the whole inside of the lamp socket smelled like burnt wire or something. We tossed it. But now I'm always a little scared to leave lights on when we're not home.

The second one was even scarier. Both my kids like to sleep with the radio on all n ight. We had bought my son a memorex boombox (something cheap from Walmart since he was about 3 at the time and into changing his own CDs and we wanted to get something that we wouldn't be upset about if he broke it). He had been using it for a month. One day, while my husband was reading him a bedtime story, the radio started to smoke. My husband unplugged it, grabbed it and threw it outside in the driveway. He finished putting our son to bed and when we went out an hour later, it was STILL SMOKING. The inside of it had melted and the outside was so hot you coudln't touch it (and it had been unplugged for an hour by then, outside in the cold winter air). I shudder to think what might have happened if the radio had decided to start smoking a few hours later, when we were all asleep. No more cheap walmart boomboxes for us!
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Steve Miller
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Bull-Carp
The things to really watch carefully are cheap multi-outlet strips - the sub-$5 variety you get at big box stores.

I've seen several of them burn and one took the better part of a house with it.
Wag more
Bark less
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