E-Cigarette Exploded In Atlanta, Could Have Destroyed Home [Video]

An Atlanta woman said the new e-cigarette she bought to improve her health nearly destroyed her house after it exploded while charging.

Elizabeth Wilkowski stated, “It was like kaboom!, and I see this flame shooting across my living room.”

“If I hadn’t had been home, I would have lost my dogs, I would have lost my cats, I would have lost my house,” Wilkowski told WSB-TV.

Wilkowski bought the e-cigarette in hopes to improve her overall health, so she didn’t expect it to explode while she was charging it.

Wilkowski had it off to the side, plugged into her computer USB in order to charge the battery.

When the e-cigarette exploded, Yahoo! reported that Wilkowski used a cleaning rag to grab the e-cigarette, unplugging it, and then moved to extinguish the fire.

WSB-TV reported that the fire burned the rug, and left a scorch mark on the couch.

Leonard Rodda owns the store where Wilkowski bought the E-cigarette.

Rodda told WSB-TV that he no longer carries the brand, E-Hit, the brand that Wilkowski purchased. He’s offering to replace it with the brand he now carries from a Marietta distributor.

“I’ve only recently heard about that with the battery, and it’s a low voltage so I’m surprised that anything like that would happen,” Rodda said.

But are these sort of fires really that uncommon?

Retailer Doris Holmes says that while these fires do make headlines, they are rare.

Holmes just recently opened up her own e-cigarette shop, but told WSB-TV that anything electronic could catch fire.

“Anything that’s electronic and plugs into electricity, you have the potential for it catching on fire. I don’t leave my dishwasher running when I leave my home,” said Holmes.

The Business Insider reported on the incident, and had the following to say:

TVECA co-founder Thomas Kiklas said that from the video of the incident involving the Atlanta explosion, it appeared that the e-cigarette may have been mismatched with the charging device.

Another possible explanation could be that Wilkowski may have left the device in the USBport for too long and got overcharged, according to Kiklas, who compared the smoking gadgets to cell phones or electric toothbrushes.

The co-founder of the trade association said that since 2007, when e-cigarettes first came into use in the U.S., he has heard of only one other incident in which a device exploded.

A wrong charger causing an explosion? If this sounds new to you, well, it shouldn’t. The Inquisitr has reported on many phones, such as the Apple iPhone, exploding while charging and in many cases, because users where using incorrect chargers.

Check out Elizabeth Wilkowski’s describe what she felt after her e-cigarette exploded:

[Image via WSB-TV]