Fire!

[Electronic M]

I just remembered an ammusing incident from a few years back.

I had bought a cool looking 60's GE toaster with a mini oven on the bottom at a garage sale a few months maybe a year back from this incident. It was around 8 years back, and I was about 12. We were running late for picking Dad up at the airport, and Mom gave me two options for fixing my self a snack (or was it breakfast), and the more apealing one involved draging out the toaster (which had been put away for some reason porbably related to trying to sell the house) well I set it up and ran it. The wireing in the kitchen buzzed ( granted this was an old house with very old wireing and I could hear the wireing buzz when every thing was turned off sometimes, but this was much louder than normal). The Toaster finished toasting while I waited impatiently (and somewhat nerviously) watching it, and as I was waiting for it to cool down enough for me to retrieve my meal the buzzing continued.....And suddenly POP! PFFSFSFSFSSFSSSSSSH! The cord exploded into a crimsion flame that was a dead ringer for the morning glory sparklers my friends and I would light on summer nights. Along with the flame there were sparks all of which came from the cord at the point that it entered the molded on plug. My first reaction after the I realized what was hapening (I feel was very brave) I grabed the cord and yanked it out of the outlet! It was a miracle the plug came with as one of the wires was completely evaporated from the plug to about 1/4" away, and the cord end of the melted lead had the conductor exposed. The strands at the exposed end had melted together and fused for about 2mm!

Of course the kitchen fuse never blew. :roll:

I had just changed the original outlet when we made some minor renovations to the kitchen, and I had to change the damn thing again after that because of the char marks the fire (explosion?) left on the new plastic outlet! Grr.

I supose it could have been worse though.....