In a story that will horrify many a TikTok snack girlie, a Queensland woman has shared the terrifying moment her Kmart air fryer exploded *out of nowhere*, resulting in her entire home being engulfed in smoke and leaving her homeless. What the actual F.
TikToker Lexi Partell (@leximeiwan
Replying to @Taylah I’ve picked this comment because its the top one – no shade 🫶 friends im not attacking your air fryer I’m hoping you will have a refresher conversation with your fam, your housemated etc on what to do in the event of a fire. I also now get unlimited use of that emoji. Love your homeless, shoeless friend. xx #fire#housefire
) posted a picture of her blackened and ashy kitchen with the caption, “POV: You’re a Kmart Air Fryer Girly”.
In the comments she wrote that the air fryer “was not in use or turned on” when it spontaneously caught fire. How reassuring!
“My partner was in the house and escaped. We have no home now, and our stuff is damaged but he’s alive.”
In a follow-up video to her original TikTok, which has half a million views at the time of writing, Lexi revealed exactly what happened in the hopes it would encourage people to have an emergency plan in the unlikely case of an electrical fire.
“So my partner was in the house at the time and he did what he could to try and stop the fire and then made the call to leave and call Triple zero,” she said.
“And I thank goodness that he’s made that decision every day because it’s not just the fire — which you can see is kind of quite isolated in this area — that is dangerous. It was less than a minute before he couldn’t see anything in the house and the floors [were] quite slippery because of the ash.”
Lexi then revealed the extent of the damage to her home because of the air fryer.
“You can see on the [ceiling] that it’s really black — that’s throughout the whole front section of our house. Everything is black. The ash is on everything in the back of the house,” she said.
“We’re renters so we rely on our [house’s] owners to have insurance and have this fixed. But that’s for a prolonged amount of time so right now we don’t really have a home, so we’re relying solely on our friends good natures. Thank you to all of them [who provided] places for us to stay.”
Lexi also revealed her real estate agent had been “rude and brash” about her situation. Shocker.
In another update, she said the real estate agency had been “cold” and only gave her and her partner 72 hours to leave — as in, they were only given 72 hours to find a new place, move four bedrooms worth of furniture, and ensure “the lawns and gardens are attended to by the day of handover”. Oh, and they were also asked to fill out an exit report.
Every day, my hatred of real estate agents is given more fuel.
Lexi revealed her partner was traumatised by the incident and had not slept since the explosion.
The exploding air fryer in question was Kmart’s viral 5.3L one that goes for $89 a pop. They’ve been selling since 2019 and are super popular, so no doubt the seemingly random explosion would leave heaps of Kmart girlies concerned for their own fryer.
“At Kmart, the safety of our customers and team is our number one priority,” a spokesperson told PEDESTRIAN.TV.
“We are taking this report extremely seriously and are looking into this customer’s experience with our quality team. We have reached out to this customer directly so that we can begin a proper investigation and offer our support.”
Yeah, you’d fkn hope so hey.
Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100’s of titles, curated specifically for you.