TEC grill went BOOM and caught our house on fire.

On Sunday, Sept 27, our TEC grill failed. We didn't know about the breaking screws. It had apparently flared up quite a few times, but we thought that it was just the meat catching when we opened the top up. On Sunday we were cooking a pork loin at about 33% gas levels across all burners. This should've taken about 30 minutes but we checked it after ten and found the loin was completely burnt on the outside and raw in the middle. We've been having bad luck with BBQ and couldn't figure out why.

So we were going to put some steaks on but before that we looked and noticed the temp gauge on the lid was showing over 800 degrees!!! It was off the charts! My friend also noticed some flames leaking out the lid on the right side of the grill. He quickly turned all the knobs off and BOOM! Something blew and propane started venting freely from the tank. It shot a column of fire about 4 feet wide that engulfed the grill and rose to about 10 feet hitting the bottom of our back porch. It blew nearby floodlights and our porch started to burn.

Extinguishers couldn't put it out. I screamed for him to call 911 and get the fire department. I told him to run inside in case the propane tank exploded. The flames were intense! I ran to a hose to try to put out the fire and was finally able to get it under control. What was left was a twisted, mangled grill and a LOT of fire damage to our home. I'm talking with an attorney today after she sees the damage. Luckily, no one was hurt or killed. Just a LOT of singed hair.

I'm very angry that TEC isn't correcting this problem that's been plaguing homeowners for two years and the information that people have had did not bring some kind of recall at Lowe's. Needless to say, I can't repair the grill nor would I want to. I now need to rebuild one side of my back porch and re-run electrical and cable connections to melted flood lights. Yes, they actually melted in the heat.

It appears to be the same issue I've read about in the 9 pages of this forum. Thank you so much for having this thread running. I hope that this helps others out there.