If you’ve ever read the fine print on the owner’s manual
that comes with a new water heater, you may
have noticed a paragraph that says something like this:
You may have wondered if that’s a purely theoretical
danger, or if such kitchen-sink reenactments of the
Hindenburg disaster really happen.
It turns out that they do. The photo at right shows
the aftermath of an accident at a U.S. Navy facility in
Key West, Florida, where a base housing inspector had
been performing a routine inspection of an unoccupied
housing unit. Minutes after she turned on the
water in the kitchen sink and started the dishwasher,
the machine exploded, blew across the