Nieuw Vennep, The Netherlands

When power failed last night around dinnner time, a man decided to warm a pan of sate? sauce on a camping cooking device (primus) with gas burner. So he put the gas bottle on top of his electrical furnace without switching the furnace off and cooked his sauce, and left the gass bottle, containing the highly explosive butane, right there. Later, when power started functioning again, so did the electrical furnace. The butane bottle became so hot it exploded, which caused not only a big ball of fire, but also destroyed one of the kitchen walls.

Note: I am quite sure it is printed on ALL of these devices that you aren't supposed to use them in your home, and I can only marvel at the sheer stupidity of someone putting something like this on top of a furnace. As by miracle, neither the man nor his family got hurt, but I do believe it is worth a Honourable Mention, especially since the man found it necessary to brag about the occurance in Hollands favourite boulevard paper, and had his full name printed: Mees Overbeek. He's just asking for it.

(I am not a native speaker, but I've translated the newspaper article to the best of my ability, please feel free to correct spelling)

Submitted on 01/26/2005

Submitted by: Kathelijne
Reference: De Telegraaf 24 januari 2005

Copyright © 2005 DarwinAwards.com

Daniel said:
Maybe Toss: Too Common
We get a lot of these indoor cooking stories, but it's nice to know our european friends are trying to improve the breed as well.

Charles said:
Neutral: Honorable Mention
Most of the "cooking indoors with camp cookers" stories on the site end up being about carbon monoxide poisoning, so I will accept this one. I don't know whether it is butane ("camping gaz" in the orange canister) or propane (blue canister), but either one would make quite a bang...

Jack said:
Neutral: Honorable Mention
I'm going to go with Charles on this one. This is not your usual indoor cooking/carbon monoxide poisoning story.

Kelly said:
Neutral: Other
I don't have any way to know if this is a true or false account.

Becky said:
Neutral: Honorable Mention
He gave it a good try, at least. And I agree with Charles about it being unusual.

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