An investigation is underway after a smoke alarm appeared to spontaneously combust in a home in Hull this week.
16-year-old Victoria Gray reported hearing a "large bang" which she thought was the family dog, Cookie. Upon further investigation she discovered a small fire in the utility room, which she extinguished herself with a bucket of water, according to the Daily Mail.
The Fire Angel ST620 was in a newspaper rack in the room at the time of the explosion. There have been reports that another fire was caused by the same model elsewhere in the UK last week.
The smoke alarms are supplied by fire and rescue services nationally as part of a programme to encourage fire safety. Humberside Fire and Rescue Service have decided to suspend providing the detectors while an independent laboratory investigates further.
A spokesman for Sprue Aegis, who produce the Fire Angel alarms, said that they are cooperating while the independent analysis is ongoing, and in the mean time it is "very much business as usual."
"Highly technical people cannot explain how it happened. We’re not taking these reports lightly, however we provide one million alarms every year and we’re talking about one small fire. This didn’t happen in situ. The forensic side of it is looking into what happened to [the alarm] when it was taken off the ceiling."
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