Exploding table shocks family

A woman says her family had a lucky escape when her dining room table exploded embedding shards of glass in nearby furniture. Donna Richardson was making a meal on Sunday when the glass table she bought a year ago shattered, sending sharp glass fragments 20 feet through the air. Mrs Richardson, 41, from Stoney Stanton, said: "It sounded like a bomb had gone off, and I got the fright of my life. My husband was in the bath at the time and he ran down, thinking a car had hit the house.

"There was glass everywhere – with shards stuck into the chairs around the table. Any other day of the week, we would have been sitting round there having dinner – at 5.15pm on the dot – but on Sundays we just get our own meals ourselves, thank goodness." Donna looked on the internet and said she found rare explosions like this could be caused when coated glass, like the sheet in her table, was heated – usually by the sun.



She said she was angry because when she bought the table from the Tesco website, she was never told to keep it out of direct sunlight. The Calida dining table is being sold on Tesco's website for £230. A spokesperson for Tesco said: "We are very pleased that no harm was caused and have said sorry to Mr and Mrs Richardson. We have offered a full refund and a further gesture of goodwill to Mr and Mrs Richardson."

Paul Davis, of Leicestershire trading standards, said cases of exploding glass were extremely rare. He said: "While this is very rare I have heard of it happening to tables and even oven or shower doors – any toughened glass. It can be caused when glass is exposed to sunlight. We would advise that people try to avoid this."