Thermos Bottles
Odd disaster from a Thermos Bottle...
WCCO-TV in Minneapolis, MN has the story:
The Cost Of A Cup Of Coffee: $77K
A cup of coffee nearly cost a Twin Cities family the biggest investment most people will ever make: their home.
It is only fitting a story about something so destructive, one that sounds cooked up, would take place in a kitchen.
"I was in shock, I didn't know what to think," Ron Greenberg said.
Understandable, considering a cup of coffee forever changed Greenberg's morning routine.
"That's what I was doing here, is holding onto the thermos here, by the handle, twisting this, when the thermos broke away, the handle broke away from the thermos and it started shooting black stuff out there," Greenberg said.
Greenberg's two-year-old breakproof Stanley thermos broke.
"It was like a smoke bomb going off," Greenberg remembered. "It filled up the whole kitchen and the whole living room with a cloud of black smoke."
"I had no idea, when he said the thermos handle came off," Maureen Greenberg said. "I could never have imagined the mess we'd have."
That black stuff was charcoal, and it covered the Greenbergs' kitchen.
And the $77K charge:
"When my mom was packing my lunch, she washed the table once and then packed my lunch and then when I got to school and had lunch, my sandwich was black on both sides," 8-year-old Amy Greenberg said.
"We had to move out into a hotel for several days," Ron Greenberg said.
"To find it went everywhere in our house was really overwhelming," Maureen Greenberg said.
Even more overwhelming was after eight weeks of cleaning, the Greenbergs were stuck with the bill.
"The final total was $77,882.63," said Maureen Greenberg.
Their insurance finally paid for it and Stanley admits to having the same problem with other bottles. Their insurance finally paid the cleaning bill (after initially refusing it).
Popular Science has an
article on the Stanley Thermos and it says:
The ubiquitous coffee-carrying Stanley vacuum bottle has turned 90 years old. Like so many good products, it's easy to take it for granted. It's always there when you need it, and it works flawlessly. The container uses a double-wall stainless steel bottle. Liquids are contained in the inner bottle that's surrounded by a vacuum cavity, which, in turn, is insulated and protected by a barrier of ground charcoal--believe it or not. As unusual as the design may sound, it works. And although the design has been owned by several different companies, its most well-known parent is Aladdin. Aladdin sold the business and Stanley branding rights to Pacific Market International or PMI--a Seattle-based consumer products company founded in 1983.
I have one of their older Field Green bottles -- I'll have to make sure it never comes into the house otherwise this might happen:
Their heating system was running at the time of the bottle breaking and it distributed the charcoal throughout the house.
Posted by DaveH at June 11, 2005 9:49 PM