A Calgary family says they were stunned when the glass dining room table they were sitting at suddenly shattered and sent pieces of glass hurtling through the air. Now they are trying to understand what happened.
Earlier this week, Wasim Huq and his two children, aged 12 and 7, were sitting at the dining room table doing homework and eating lunch, when the table’s tempered glass top broke without warning from under them.
Because the tabletop was made of tempered glass, the glass exploded into tiny cubes instead of shards, but pieces flew everywhere, leaving the kids with minor scratches.
“I was shocked,” Huq said. “I thought tempered glass means it’s safe. It’s safety glass. I mean my kids play around it and under it all the time and I never thought something like this would happen.”
The family took several photos of the broken table before cleaning up, but they say they are still finding fragments three days after the incident. Now, they are struggling to understand what happened.
Tempered glass is normally about four times stronger than ordinary glass. But David Igenuma of Glass Doctor, a glass repair centre in Calgary, says sometimes, a tiny imperfection created during the glass manufacturing, or something as small as a chip or fracture in the glass, can leave the glass vulnerable to breaking under certain conditions.
“If there’s a drastic change in temperature, which would lead to some thermal stress in the glass, then the trigger would likely happen,” explained Igenuma. “Or, it could be mechanical pressure or pressure exerted upon the glass.”
Revolve Furnishings, the retailer who sold the table to the Huq family nearly two years ago, confirmed to CTV Calgary’s Consumer Watch reporter Lea Williams-Doherty that the manufacturer, a European company, is investigating.
Jeff Stoner, a co-owner of Revolve Furnishings, says spontaneous explosions of glass are rare, but he has encountered two other incidents in his 20 years in the business -- including once in person.
He’s offered to replace the table for the Huqs or give them a full refund.
With a report from CTV Calgary’s Lea Williams-Doherty
