In the hours before their Thanksgiving meal, firefighters, not family, arrived at the Logan family home in Kansas City. Ken Logan recalls what his wife saw.
"She saw the smoke coming out of the kitchen along with the flames coming out of the dishwasher," said Ken Logan.
Flames that charred their kitchen and filled the house with smoke. The remaining blackened pieces leave little doubt in their minds where this fire started, and the Logan's are not alone.
"The flames shooting out the side of it, looked like what you see from a benzene torch," said Michael Hayden who lives near Cincinnati, Ohio.
"We saw flames probably 10 to 12 inches high, then a billow of black toxic smelling smoke," said Karin Peterson who lives in the Denver, Colorado area.
Fire investigation reports we obtained don't zero in on a cause, but they do show a potential problem with homeowners and some investigators blaming dishwasher fires for the damage and even a death in an Oregon home. From Florida, to Arizona, to Michigan, to right here in Green Country.
People like Kathrena Franks, she lives just north of Tulsa, and she witnessed her machine go haywire first hand.
"Everything was going off so I opened the door to see what was going on and punched the controls, the buttons to make it stop, and it blistered the ends of all of my fingers," said Franks.
Kathrena feels lucky it wasn't worse.
Incidents were logged with www.saferproducts.gov. It's a public website run by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, of those, more than half reported smoke or flames.
"It was scary because we have young children, and it could have been a disaster," said Peterson.
While a few hundred potential disasters were made public in that online forum, our investigation uncovered that the CPSC knows of more than 1,600 reported problems with dishwashers in the last five years. Those complaints simply aren't shared with the public, unless you ask to see them. In 80% of those cases though, consumers reported a fire.
We have questions too about what brands are mentioned in those cases.
The CPSC won't tell us until it gets permission from the companies involved.
We've been waiting for six weeks, and while the government isn't pointing fingers at any brand, consumers are.
"I found out later how fortunate I was after seeing on the Internet about people who've lost parts of their kitchen, all of their kitchen and all of their house," said Kathrena.
Her story is one of many the federal government knows about. Between March and November of 2011, there were more than 260 complaints related to dishwashers.
Consumers are posting complaints on blogs like http:// kitchenaidefire.com., which has dozens of complaints.
Attorney Charles Fax filed a lawsuit against Whirlpool which makes KitchenAid, Kenmore, Maytag and Sears brands. Fax represents 11 people who say they've had serious damage from fires in dishwashers made by Whirlpool, which has until February 15th to respond to the lawsuit. Those who filed the complaint not only want compensation, they want a recall.
"This design defect in the control unit causes the wires inside to over heat and eventually burn," said Fax.
A defect consumers believe exists in Whirlpool machines, which accounts for about half of the dishwasher complaints on www.saferproducts.gov.
But consumers have reported fire and smoke in other brands too, including Frigidaire. While that company doesn't have as many complaints as Whirlpool, fire investigators believe a fire "in or near" a Frigidaire dishwasher killed an elderly woman in Oregon.
Consumers have also complained on www.saferproducts.gov about Bosch and GE in smaller numbers.
GE is the brand that Ken Logan says caught fire in his house.
"A dishwasher catch on fire? You've got water. How can it catch on fire? It did," said Logan.
While Oklahoman, Kathrena Franks didn't have that problem, she says she did have a really hard time getting her money back. Now she has a new dishwasher and has learned a valuable lesson.
"I don't ever run the dishwasher when I'm not here and awake," she said.
Electricians agree you should only run appliances when you're home. We do need to point out these consumers' concerns have not been verified by the government and some of the incidents may be
recalled products.
While they did not grant us interviews, a number of companies did release statements. We've included those statements in full below.
Whirlpool Statement:
Whirlpool Corporation builds its dishwashers with, among many other state-of-the-art safety
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