Woman Issues Warning After Slow Cooker 'Exploded' Like 'Volcano,' Burning Her Face, Arm, Chest

A mother in New Zealand suffered terrible burns after her slow cooker "exploded," while she was cooking dinner.

Robyn Luketina Wineera is now warning others about the potential dangers of using the appliance.

"My plea for you reading this is please throw out your pressure cookers, and do not buy them," she wrote on Facebook. "How can we trust a tiny little computer inside our pressure cookers to protect our loved ones from explosions in our home? We can't."

Wineera was in her kitchen cooking soup in her Sunbeam Crock-Pot Express Release Cooker during the July 16 incident, 7NEWS Australia reported Wednesday.

She had the slow cooker for a little over a year, and had never faced problems with it earlier.

The appliance has a pressure cooker function as well as a slow cooker function. Wineera said she was using the latter that day to "slow cook" her soup.

"The lid was on and unlocked as per the manual, the steam release dial was open as per the manual," Wineera said, 7News reported.

She eventually heard the "distinctive whistle" that usually comes from the appliance when it is on pressure-cooker mode.

"I heard the distinctive pressure whistle noise and turned the unit off," she recalled, and noted there should not have been any pressure because the steam release dial was open.

"When I went to open the lid I had barely touched it when the entire cooker exploded," she told the outlet.

The contents of the cooker blasted out "like a volcano" and seared her face, arm and chest.

"I instantly felt my right eye and lips were hot but was confused what had happened," Wineera wrote in the Facebook post. "I stood frozen in the kitchen wondering why I was wet then my brain caught up and said 'you must be burnt!'"

Wineera jumped in for a cold shower with her clothes still on and eventually made it to the hospital, where she spent two days.

"While my face was quick to heal and there is no damage to my eye I could have easily been blinded. My arm was not so lucky however and I've needed skin graft surgery to fix it," she wrote on Facebook.

Since the burn incident, Wineera has gone to the hospital every week for her ongoing medical treatment.

She is grateful her children were not in the kitchen at the time.

Sunbeam supplier Newell Brands acknowledged the incident, and told Stuff the CPE210 model was safe to use "in accordance with the user manual."

"The circumstances around this particular incident are unique in terms of the alleged failure mode described by the consumer," the company added.

The U.S. and Canada saw the recall of almost 950,000 Sunbeam Crock-Pot Multi-Cookers in 2020, because they posed burn risks from the lid suddenly detaching if not properly locked.

The incident involving Wineera is being investigated by WorkSafe.