On 11/14/2013 7:25 PM, Danny D'Amico wrote:
....

So, there is no ground that I know of, if I understood this correctly.
....

No, you misunderstood (or the reference you looked at was wrong; I
didn't check it) -- the third wire is the ground but NEC until
relatively recently allowed the ground to also be the neutral in
specific instances, the household dryer likely the most prevalent
followed closely by electric range.

The "blinding flash" _may_ have been one of the two heater coils failing
-- does the dryer still reach full temp and otherwise function properly
as far as you can tell? If it's now taking a lot longer for things to
dry, likely you did lose an element.

If, as somebody else noted, it didn't trip the breaker the likelihood of
a short other than the element is minute. In 60 yrs in a dry climate
I've never seen a static electricity flash from a dryer vent or even got
a shock so don't say it's not possible but surely sounds far-fetched
hypothesis to me.

OTOH, when wife sewed a lot or when were many cloth diapers so that
straight or safety pins accidentally getting in the dryer caused fair
number of element shorts when one would finally manage to get thru the
vent holes in the rear of the drum and land across a heater coil. Or,
they do eventually fail on their own...

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