15-05-2025
Terrifying moment mother's HP laptop suddenly catches fire in her home after making strange hissing sound
A mother has captured the terrifying moment her HP laptop caught on fire in her own home after making a strange hissing sound.
Claire Irvine, 46, was relaxing in the living room with her daughters when she heard the noise coming from the kitchen.
Ms Irvine walked in to find thick smoke pouring out of her HP laptop, which had been left plugged in and open on the table after a day of use.
The mother quickly unplugged the machine and rushed it outside, but parts of the machine had already melted the tablecloth and scorched the table beneath it.
Although HP provided her with a replacement laptop, she says that since trying to claim expenses for damage to her furniture and urgent data recovery work, the computer brand has ignored her.
Ms Irvine, a paramedic from Hertford, Hertfordshire, said: 'It was so scary. You don't expect something to just catch fire like that.
'I'm a paramedic so I'm used to dealing with emergencies, but seeing smoke coming off my kitchen table with the kids there was a real shock.
'I unplugged it and carried it straight outside. Luckily it cooled down on its own.'
She later took the damaged laptop to a local technician, who determined that one of its three internal batteries had exploded.
He was able to recover her data, including her university dissertation, but the process cost her nearly £300.
Ms Irvine said: 'The local technician said there was no external cause. It just spontaneously burst. I hadn't done anything to the laptop to cause it.
'Luckily, he managed to recover my degree work, which was all on there.'
HP issued the family with a replacement laptop a month later.
But Ms Irvine claims the company has since gone silent after she submitted a £300 claim to cover data recovery and furniture repairs.
She said: 'They were great to start with, really engaged and surprised by what happened.
'But as soon as they got the laptop back, it's like they shut down completely. Now they're just ignoring me and it's upsetting.
'I work for the NHS. I don't have money to waste. Being fobbed off like this isn't right.'
It's not the first time that a HP laptop has caused damage.
In 2017, an exploding laptop caused hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of damage to an X-ray lab at an NHS hospital.
The Trust overseeing Ealing Hospital took HP to court over the incident, seeking almost £700,000 in compensation.
The incident caused damage to equipment that was beyond repair, including a £410,000 endoscopic X-ray machine.
And HP also recalled several models of laptop in 2018 and 2019 due to batteries' tendency to overheat.
