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Keeping an eye on portable cooking appliances is the key message to take away from the Coroner's findings on the deaths of three people in Waimate in 2015 from a fire in their home.
Small cooking appliances such as kettles, toasters and deep fat fryers should only be used while someone is there to keep an eye on them. If someone is there when a malfunction happens, they can quickly switch off the appliance and unplug it before it causes a fire.
It can be easy to accidentally switch on appliances while cleaning or moving them. So when you’ve finished using an appliance make it a habit to switch off the appliance at the socket, or better yet, switch it off before unplugging it. Get into the habit of doing this every time.
Our investigation found that the fire was most likely caused by the malfunction of a plastic kettle in the house.
Kettles sold in New Zealand are declared medium and high risk articles. Our safety standards require kettles have two safety switches to prevent overheating in addition to the thermostat control that switches off the kettle when the water reaches boiling point.
In this case, we think the kettle may have been empty of water, or had the lid up, and was accidentally switched on and left on, perhaps even for weeks.
Over 66,000 kettles of this model were sold with no other fires that we know of. We tried to reproduce a fire from a number of these kettles without success.
Remember: Power off + Plug out = Protect your home.
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