When Emma Palmer heard her smoke alarm beep from downstairs, she assumed her son Oliver — then 19 and home on holiday from Warwick University — was burning toast.
But when she opened her bedroom door, she immediately realised the problem was much more serious. Thick clouds of acrid smoke were billowing along the landing and within seconds Emma was coughing and spluttering uncontrollably.
‘I realised Oliver was still in bed, and I started screaming at him to wake up. I roused him and then we dashed back into my bedroom, put a towel under the door and rang the fire brigade. The smoke was just too thick to go downstairs.’
Emma’s husband was out at work, but with the flames raging below, she and Oliver were effectively trapped upstairs.
‘It was all a bit of a blur, and incredibly frightening,’ says Emma, 48, who works at a private hospital and lives in Cheshunt, Hertfordshire. ‘I don’t want to dwell on what-ifs, but we could so easily have died.’
Emma’s terrifying ordeal had a surprising cause — not an unattended candle or an iron accidentally left on, but her three-year-old Hotpoint tumble dryer.
That morning, quite without warning, the dryer burst into flames as it dried a load of sheets.
‘The irony is that my husband is an electrical engineer,’ says Emma. ‘So we’d always been very careful about cleaning out the lint from the filter. When the fire started, it didn’t occur to me for a minute that it could be the dryer.
‘The police arrived before the fire brigade. They knocked the front door down and came up through the smoke to get us. Then the fire brigade arrived and put out the flames, which were confined to the utility room but caused £15,000 worth of damage.
‘We had to move into a hotel for two weeks and then into rented accommodation while the work was done. In total, we were out of our home for seven months.’
After an investigation, it emerged the problem was down to an electrical fault, which meant the machine didn’t cut out when it had finished but instead grew dangerously overheated. After some negotiation, Hotpoint accepted liability and paid the Palmer family compensation of more than £15,000.
Yet the Palmers’ nightmare is far from a one-off. On the contrary, a 2013 study of fire brigade records by the consumer watchdog Which? showed that more than 3,700 fires are caused each year by faulty household appliances of differing brands, with washing machines responsible for 600 and tumble dryers for 500.
‘We’re definitely getting more and more inquiries from people who’ve suffered damage because of their washing machines and tumble dryers,’ says Jill Paterson, a solicitor who specialises in product liability cases at London law firm Leigh Day.
‘In some cases, the faults are in models where the manufacturer has already realised there is a problem and has tried to recall them. But in many others there is no apparent issue with the machine until it goes up in flames. Every household has these products, so the potential scale of the problem is enormous. People don’t think it will happen to them, but it does.’
Most frequently the fires are caused by the overheating of an electrical component or issues with the circuit board — but sometimes the cause is never confirmed because the product is so badly damaged.
Jill Paterson says a key factor is the way the machines are produced. ‘Since the different components are manufactured all over the world and then assembled somewhere else, it’s perhaps not surprising that machines occasionally have faults.
‘Obviously it depends on the manufacturer, but there are certain names that come up again and again in these fires.’ Paterson advises researching thoroughly before you buy. ‘Don’t just go with the cheapest model. The quality of your machine can make a real difference.’
There is no suggestion that any of the models mentioned here are made by rogue operators. But when something so expensive comes into your home, surely you should be able to trust in its safety.
Certainly Lorraine Ward, 36, who lives in Tamworth, Staffordshire, never thought for a moment that the new tumble dryer she bought at the end of 2012 would cause her any problems. Lorraine, a full-time mother who is married to Brent and has two children — nine-year-old Molly and two-year-old Lacey — bought the new Beko product to cope with the extra washing generated by her expanding family.
‘It all happened around eight in the morning,’ she says. ‘Lacey was a newborn, and I’d been up most of the night with her, so I put on a load of baby clothes and went back to bed to catch up on some sleep while Brent had the two girls in the living room.’
All of a sudden the electricity went off — the fuses were blowing — and Brent smelled smoke. He rushed along the corridor of the family’s rented bungalow to wake Lorraine.
‘The property was old-fashioned with a very thick kitchen door,’ she says. ‘I opened it and it was absolutely terrifying — like something out of a film. There was a huge wall of smoke and 2ft flames.
‘We rushed out to the road with the little ones. There were flames actually billowing out of the house.
‘Brent was desperate to get our cats out and kept going back to the front door, before they eventually came racing out by themselves.
‘After that he broke down in tears — it was the first time that I’d seen him cry.’
The fire brigade arrived, put out the blaze and treated Brent for smoke inhalation. But that was only the beginning of their ordeal.
‘We’d forgotten to renew our home insurance,’ sighs Lorraine. ‘After Lacey’s birth, I’d had to go back into hospital with blood clots on my lungs and in the middle of it all it had just slipped our minds. We were left with nothing.’
The fire had devastated the laundry room and kitchen of the bungalow, and the Wards lost many of their personal possessions.
‘We had to move into a hotel — sharing a single room between the four of us, which was extremely difficult with a newborn and a seven-year-old.
‘We eventually found a rental property in Tamworth, but had to rebuild everything from scratch — right down to our knives and forks. And it’s all the personal stuff that I really miss. All my daughter’s school photographs are gone. It’s devastating.’
The Wards’ tumble dryer was made by Beko, a Turkish brand that makes a fifth of all new white goods sold in Britain. Due to a fault in this model, Beko issued a product recall in November 2012, just weeks before the blaze in January 2013. But the Wards didn’t see it.
‘It was in some newspapers,’ says Lorraine, ‘But, again, it was just around the time I had Lacey and we weren’t paying much attention to the news.’
Beko made an initial payment of around £20,000 to cover the damaged items, and have since made a further payment of approximately £12,000 to the family to compensate for the distress caused.
‘I still feel hugely angry with them,’ say Lorraine. ‘They’ve made us fight every step of the way for the second payment, and we finally reached a settlement only three weeks ago.’
But the collateral damage lingers. ‘Molly was a changed girl afterwards,’ says Lorraine. ‘She’s terrified of anything that sounds like an alarm, or any new noises she hasn’t heard before. She’s gone from being a happy, confident girl to one who occasionally couldn’t even talk because she was so scared.’
Lawyer Jill Paterson says: ‘The psychological impact can be enormous for everyone. The family is often moved out of their home, fighting insurers — it’s incredibly stressful. They frequently feel they have lost their identities.
‘All their belongings, memories, even passports might be destroyed. So while a company might not regard an incident as that serious because no one has died, it can still wreck lives.’
Certainly, for Emma Palmer, the psychological aftershocks of the incident were tremendous. ‘I wasn’t physically injured,’ she says, ‘but the damage was immense. I started suffering insomnia, and when I did sleep I had horrid nightmares.
‘I could smell smoke constantly and had a paranoia about my electrical devices, needing to check them all the time.’
Judy Hanson can relate to Emma’s ordeal. Five years ago she left her son, Jack, then 11, sleeping upstairs, while she popped out to wash the car on the driveway.
When she went back inside, the house was full of smoke.
‘When I think about what could have happened it makes me feel sick. I’d bought a brand new Hoover washing machine from Curry’s three weeks earlier. I put a load on while I went out to get some bits and when I got back there was smoke everywhere. I think the friction must have caused a spark. There weren’t actual flames, but I dread to think what would have happened if it had been left any longer.’
Judy, 57, a script editor from Bridlington, East Yorkshire, says: ‘We took the machine straight back to Curry’s, and they gave me £50 off another brand.’
Which seems scant compensation.
‘I’m so careful now. I would never dream of leaving my washing machine running when I leave the house,’ says Judy.
Washing machine engineer Andy Trigg founded the website whitegoodshelp.co.uk in part to warn people of the potential risk of fire posed by the common devices in our homes.
He says: ‘Appliances have generally become much safer due to being controlled by software which can abort wash cycles and shut off the machine if they detect overheating or overfilling,’ he says. ‘But if a fault occurs, manufacturers still can’t stop it catching fire.’
He advises registering all new appliances with the manufacturer so they can contact you if there is a problem with the model you have bought.
‘A lot of people don’t bother registering their appliance, but the first thing any manufacturer would do if they found a safety problem would be to go through their database and contact everyone. They might put something out in the newspapers, but it’s pretty hit and miss.
‘The main thing is not to leave appliances unattended when running. We can’t sit in front of them watching the wash cycle, but don’t completely leave the house or go to bed. It’s not worth the risk.
Fire isn’t the only hazard posed by faulty or damaged washing machines. Late last year, Susan McIlroy and her baby son, Aaron, narrowly avoided serious injury when the glass door of their Beko machine exploded in front of them, sending dagger-sharp splinters of glass flying through the air.
‘I had a wash on in the kitchen and was in the other room with Aaron, who was then 20 months old,’ says Susan. ‘I heard a funny clicking noise coming from the machine so went into the kitchen to investigate and Aaron followed me.
‘I actually bent down to look at the door, but then lifted my head and started to walk off, leaving Aaron still standing in front of it. Seconds later it exploded and the glass went everywhere.
‘Aaron was only about a foot away, but amazingly he suffered nothing worse than small cuts on his face. It could have been much worse. But, of course, he was terrified and became totally hysterical. There were shards all over the kitchen — it was honestly like a bomb had gone off. I found it so frightening. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened had it exploded just a few seconds earlier, while I was peering into it. I’m fairly sure I’d have been blinded.’
Susan contacted Beko, who told her the machine was out of warranty since it was two years old, and apparently it would cost £75 to call out an engineer.
‘They didn’t seem to care about what had happened,’ says Susan. ‘But there was no way I was giving them more money at that point.’
Susan then contacted the online retailer where she’d bought the machine, Appliances Direct, who were more helpful and persuaded Beko to provide her with a new model.
The firm still hasn’t admitted any liability, but has since provided a further £300 to cover the cost of clothing in the machine that was ripped by the glass.
Andy Trigg has heard of many similar cases. ‘It’s a problem that covers multiple brands,’ he says. ‘The word “explode” sounds sensational, but that’s the one used by most people when they describe the problem — some say it’s like a bomb.
And when you think about how small children might press their face against a washing machine, it does become very frightening.
No parent could be expected to foresee the thick glass door of their washing machine shattering, but it’s best not to let children get up too close — just in case.
‘It seems manufacturers are saying that the problem is caused by foreign obstructions — such as coins or buckles — hitting and weakening the door glass, which can then shatter under constant heating up and cooling down.
‘Another theory is that it’s caused by people overloading the washing machine. As a general rule, you shouldn’t overload the machine by cramming it so full that the laundry just turns around in one big lump.’
Susan says: ‘It’s just not something I expected to happen. You take all sensible precautions with your children — such as making sure cleaning chemicals are locked away and having stair gates. But you don’t expect your washing machine to blow up in their face.’
A spokeperson for Beko said: ‘Every Beko product is designed and manufactured to meet our customers’ requirements, focusing on safety, reliability, quality and innovation. All our products meet and exceed UK and European standards.
‘With around ten million white goods appliances sold by manufacturers in the UK each year, a very small number may develop faults or component failures.
‘When these involve a Beko-manufactured appliance, we work with customers and consumers to resolve these issues wherever possible.’
A spokesperson for Hotpoint said: ‘As the leading white goods manufacturer, the safety of our customers is our number one priority. We take any product safety issues very seriously, including those experienced by Mrs Palmer, whose claim has been resolved.’
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