On the evening of 4 August, the Liu family returned home at around 9:00pm to the smell of something burning. Thinking the house might be on fire they began to inspect from room to room but found nothing aside from some water dripping from the ceiling.

“I wonder if someone put it out” someone said as they made their way to the second floor still seeing no sign of a fire aside from the stench. Then upon opening the door to the bathroom, they saw the devastation.

The entire bathroom was covered in black soot and scattered debris consisting of ceramic chunks and circuitry. It seemed as if the washlet that the Liu family was using exploded at some point between 6:00pm and 9:00pm.

Their home was spared by the fact that the exploding washlet was blown clean off the water pipe it was hooked up to. The pipe started overflowing and extinguished the flames before they could spread to the rest of the house.

According to Chinese media there have been other occurrences of luxury toilets blowing up in other cities. However, each of the toilets is said to have been made by a different manufacturer. This is also following recent reports of widespread smartphone explosions.

It may not be a coincidence that high-tech products have been seemingly overheating during a prolonged heat wave afflicting many parts of the country. Media outlets are reminding people not to leave plugged-in devices unattended, and to avoid exposing them to direct sunlight.

Meanwhile, netizens who couldn’t resist a story about an exploding toilet came out in full force with comments such as “that’s crappy”; “hot sh*t!” and “maybe they had a gas leak”. However, once the jokes began to subside on message boards someone had a sobering realization.

“Is there anything else that hasn’t exploded yet? I want something more surprising to explode.”

Sadly no one could think of anything funnier that could explode (honorable mention to “cockroaches”) and an uncomfortable silence filled the forum. And so with the Liu family completely uninjured and having minimal damage done to their home, the true tragedy of the exploding toilet revealed itself.

Source: NicoNico News via My Game News Flash (Japanese)
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