Marina Hill still can’t believe what happened after she unpacked this box of Martha Steward glass bowls.
“It looked like a war had taken place in here!” Hill says.
The Victoria woman bought the mixing bowls last month at the Tillicum Home Outfitters.
She’d just put them on her kitchen counter and was about to wash them when the phone rang.
She stepped across the room to answer it and was stunned at what happened next.
“I heard a long bang and then the largest bowl exploded and pieces of glass were flying everything and I mean everywhere,” says Hill. “I literally put my hands up in from of my face to shield myself from the glass.”
Hill says it was absolutely terrifying.
“It didn’t just go off once,” she explains. “It continued popping and spraying glass for another 10 or 15 minutes. I left the room — I was scared to death.”
Even more disturbing — this isn’t an isolated case.
Since 2014, Heath Canada says there have been 126 documented cases of glass dishes unexpectedly shattering.
A temperature change is often the culprit.
But in 71 of those cases, temperature wasn’t a factor.
“It could have been a lot of things,” says Vancouver Studio Glass owner Benjamin Kikkertt. “It could have been an impurity in the glass. It could have been a disruption on the production cycle and a strain built up and it released very violently.”
After cleaning up all the broken glass, Hill took everything back to Home Outfitters.
But she was shocked when they said they wouldn’t give her a refund because the company’s in receivership.
She’s now calling for the bowls — which are labelled ‘Made in the USA’ — recalled for safety reasons.
“If I had been closer, if I was standing at my sink, the glass would have flew at me, at my face,” she says. “It could have been very dangerous.”
Home Outfitters is now looking into the indent.
Tess van Straaten
