Kitchen Explosion

Last night the stove blew up. No joke. I went to make dinner, turned the knob to the large burner, and out shot sparks and a flame from the back of the stove behind the knob. Fortunately the curcuit braker shut the power off immediately which stopped the flame. Even more fortunately, I am fine and completely unharmed, just a little shooken up.

The power only went off in our apartment. Joshua called the apartment answering service, but they didn't pick up. So he called the power company which ran him through a list of options until they mentioned "report an outage or emergency," which he clicked, then it asked him for account information, then it took him to billing. So he called again. Another run around. He got fed up and called the police (we were concerned about this being a fire hazzard and I was afraid to get anywhere near the stove). So he looked up a non-emergency phone number for the police. "We're sorry. This number is no longer in service." Okay... he tried another non-emergency police number for the Humble - Kingwood - Atascocita area. He talked to someone and then they said, "Oh, we don't service Kingwood. You have to call Houston police." Thanks phone book. So he called the Houston police. He explained the situation so they transferred him to a specific department, who transfered him to another department, which told him to call a certain number. He called that number and got an automated list of options, none of which applied. Finally it said, "If you are calling with any other question please call back during our regular business hours." This process took about an hour. Needless to say my husband was pretty ticked off. He then tried the apartment complex number one more time but this time the answering service picked up. They called the manager who called the repair man.

The repair man (and his son who translates for him) showed up. He unplugged the stove then tried the curcuit breaker box in the closet. But the whole power was out so he went outside to the main curcuit breaker. Trouble is it was mismarked. So he had to turn the power on and off for 4 different apartments in order to determine which one was ours. He got the power up and running and told us he'd be back at 10am to take a look at the stove.

We then left the apartment to go to Wendy's for dinner. It was late so we sat in the parking lot. There's a clowder of wild cats there so we fed them french fries from the window. It helped me to calm down from the scare.

The 2 repair men came at 10am as promised. They plugged in the stove and turned the switch and sure enough they recreated the event with a flame and sparks across the kitchen floor (the stove had been pulled away from the wall). The response was, "Yeah! That's a bad stove."

The repair men replaced the electrical outlet just in case the problem was bigger than the stove. Then they investigated the stove further. It was definitely just that burner. So he took it apart and discovered that somewhere along the way the burner must have been pulled out of place which tugged the wires loose. This exposed the 2 bare wires to each other which then soldered together until they eventually blew up. The repair man took it apart and redid the wiring. He then put it a new switch. Though the switch doesn't quie match up with the stove. It says "Warm" but it's actually off. Then they put everything back and left, problem solved.

A short while later Joshua informed me there was a problem with the stove. He said, "The burner is on but the stove says it's off." I went to look at it. "Weren't you listening when the repair man explained the new switch? Warm means off. Off means HOT. Could you just not touch the stove?" Haha. That's when Joshua decided it'd be best to just unplug the stove while we're gone on our trip.

After Joshua got home from work we were both working on tidying up and packing. I was on the phone with Christina while folding laundry when the apartment suddenly went dark. Joshua had unplugged the stove but when he did so sparks and a flame shot out from the plug!!!!! Blessedly he's fine, but clearly our stove problem (more like electrical problem) is NOT FIXED!!! Joshua called the apartment complex answering service, who called the manager, who called the repair man, who showed up and turned the power back on for us. We told him what happened and he offered to come over in the morning but we told him that we're leaving and we'd prefer to take care of this when we get back. So the repair men will be back on Wednesday and the stove is completely unplugged. Let's just hope the apartment stays safe while we're gone!