We've all heard warnings about leaving small appliances plugged in 24/7,
especially if said appliances tend to get hot when operated... i.e. coffee
makers, toasters, curling irons, hair dryers, space heaters, etc.

I must admit that I have only mildly heeded these warnings, until recently.
We finally got to see a near disaster, first hand.

Unloading boxes of misc. for our recently purchased place in AZ, I found a
rather sophisticated looking hair dryer (Vidal Sassoon/1600 Watt), which
appeared to be clean and in good shape. It even had a circuit breaker built
into the power cord. However, there were no marks on the sliding switch,
indicating "off/high/low." Guessing, I slid the switch to the center,
expecting to find the "off" position. I plugged it in - nothing. Good. I
temporarily hung it on the towel rack, then turned around to see what else I
could find.

Within ten seconds, my wife screamed, and I turned around to see 6" high
flames coming out of the unit. I grabbed it and winged it out onto the
verandah. Fortunately, the black smoke residue left on the wall cleaned
up - no harm done.

Had I plugged it in, then left the room, I have no doubt that instead of
cleaning up smoke residue, we would have been fighting a fire. Had we left
the townhouse at the time, we probably would have returned to a destroyed
unit, which hopefully, wouldn't have taken others with it.

Pretty scary stuff. Even scarier is that the built-in circuit breaker
apparently didn't do anything. Later, I took the dryer apart, just to see
if I could determine why it failed. Ha! Diagnosis: Innards fried/melted
beyond recognition. The only conclusion I could make was that it was "well
done."

Just thought I'd pass this episode along, for those of you who have never
considered unplugging small appliances, when not in use.

Unc