Electrical box fires not isolated incident

Posted 10/1/15

To the Editor:

This is in regards to the fire that occurred at the Four Seasons Apartments in Warwick in September. My family experienced the same problem with a circuit breaker box in the …

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Electrical box fires not isolated incident

Posted

To the Editor:

This is in regards to the fire that occurred at the Four Seasons Apartments in Warwick in September. My family experienced the same problem with a circuit breaker box in the basement of our ranch home in Warwick twice. The first time, about six years ago, we began to notice a “fishy” smell in and about the finished basement area where it’s located. We were stumped as to where it was coming from. 

Then, one morning as I slept and my husband was in the basement gathering his work uniforms from a closet located there, he smelled a burnt smell and followed it to the circuit breaker box. When he opened the door to it flames shot out. He quickly put out the fire. When he hired electricians to repair the box they said water had leaked down the electrical conduit from outside the building and into the box and damaged the main breaker. They told us the fish smell was typical of burning phenolic, a substance used in the breaker. The scary thing is that boxes of woolen clothing and fabric had been stored near the breaker box. Had the fire made it outside the box it could have been disastrous and we could have been killed if it happened just a little sooner, while we both slept, or if we didn’t respond in time to our smoke detector.

Then, last summer, we hired a different electrical contractor, thankfully one with a better professionalism and skill at his job. We hired him to install 220 service for our new air conditioning unit. When he went to connect it to the breaker box, guess what, some problem! He informed us we had a major problem in that water had leaked down into the box and this time it had completely ruined all the breakers and we were lucky we hadn’t had a fire. When we told him about the first fire he explained that the repairs were not done correctly, and they were done by so-called licensed electricians.

The Four Seasons incident set me to thinking: Could it be that there’s an inherent problem with some of these boxes or the method of installation? And perhaps the 2010 floods and winter of 2015 have contributed to degrading of electrical systems that connect to the outside.

Perhaps the Warwick fire marshal and/or the Warwick Buildings Department should look into this before there continues to be more fires like this. These, like I stress, are not isolated incidents. I keep hearing in the news “cause of fire suspected of being caused by an electrical problem.” The media doesn’t always specify what that electrical problem is. I have to wonder how many of the electrical problems are caused by faulty electrical boxes.

Sue Bergeron

Warwick

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