Woman says this common household device nearly burned down her home
An Oregon woman has issued a viral warning not to leave one common household item unchecked.
Julie Endicott, who goes by @homesteadingmommasaga on TikTok, revealed in a recent video that she discovered a plugged-in USB-C charging cable burning through a blanket in her house.
“Something was definitely hot. … I’m looking around, and I’m freaking out because I could smell something,” Endicott explains in the video.
She said the charger was “fairly new” and that up until that point, she had hardly used it.
Endicott, who runs a farm in the countryside, tells Realtor.com® that the faulty charger was generic and had no brand name.
“There is no lettering or brand name on the charger. I have no idea what actual electronic device it was intended for,” she explains. “I thought any USB-C charger could be universally used for all electronics that require a USB-C charger.”
Her son’s tablet had been plugged into it overnight and had been charging for about 12 hours.
“My son unplugged it [from the charger] in the morning and asked me to turn on his tablet, which I didn’t because we were going outside to do work,” she says. “Then it had been unplugged from the tablet and that end of the charger had been lying on top of the blanket for around four hours or more.”
Endicott was at home and looking for her purse before heading out to run errands when she sat down to respond to a text message.
“I was responding real quick when I could smell something hot,” she says. “I smelled my phone and determined it wasn’t my phone. And then I looked up from my phone and could see smoke in the air, and it was heaviest in my living room.”
Her son was in the living room at the time.
“I started checking everything that was plugged into all of the outlets,” she says. “When I made my way to the couch, there was an outlet behind the couch. I could see smoke coming out of the blanket.”
She quickly unplugged the charger and threw it outside.
“I had seen the charger sitting on the blanket earlier when I was sitting on the couch in the morning but didn’t think anything of it,” she says.
“It looked normal and there was no indication of damage. I had no idea they were that dangerous. When it started melting, it smelled like overheated electronics. Hot electronics have a particular smell, which is why I started searching all the electronics plugged into outlets in the living room.”
Endicott says she plugs all chargers into a power strip now, and she shuts it off when it’s not in use.
“I also do not leave them near anything flammable,” she adds.