Explosion

Episode #809

August 3, 2024

Shards of glass exploded and rained down on us.

My wife and I had just finished our shower. Neither of us noticed that the other was opening the by-pass sliding glass doors. As both doors opened one of the metal rod-shaped handles impacted the edge of a 3/8 thick x 3 foot x 6 foot glass door panel.

The deafening explosion of tempered glass shards flowed over us like a crystal waterfall onto the floor of the shower. In the weird silence and the screaming that followed we found ourselves frozen in place. At Paula’s feet a red stain was growing.

I looked through the new opening in the shower and saw a bathroom rug within reach. I dumped the glass off the rug and flipped it over forming a bridge from Paula to the floor outside. Single file, we walked along the rug, creating a path out of the bathroom with towels as we went.

Outside the bathroom, we assessed our injuries. We both had numerous minor scratches. The top of Paula’s foot and her arm above the wrist were bleeding. We made our way down to the other bathroom. Paula rinsed her wounds in the downstairs shower. We both rinsed out our hair to make sure the glass was gone.

Then we were two apes in an urban jungle picking flecks of glass off each others bodies.

Paula’s wounds were not bleeding too badly, so I helped her close the cuts with butterfly bandages. We dressed, sat down and played cards for the next few hours.

On inspection Paula was still bleeding and there was some swelling under the skin so we went to Urgent Care. The staff there was fast, efficient and comforting. A couple of hours and nine stitches later we left for home. The fact that nothing more than a few stitches and some Tylenol was required is the miracle of the incident. We are, frankly, lucky to be alive.

The next day I scooped up the glass, vacuumed and rinsed everything down. We removed and stored the remaining glass door. 

Tempered glass is not safety glass. It is far from safe. Untempered glass will break into large, sharp, jagged shards. Tempered glass crumbles into small granular pieces. These pieces are still sharp. They generate a dust of glass splinters. These splinters stick to skin and hide on floors and in carpet.

I made a call the to contractor that remodeled the bathroom to see who he knew that could replace the door.

After some conversation and horrified recollections of the exploding glass Paula and I decided not to replace the glass and opted for shower curtains instead.

The design of the shower doors should never have included metal handles that could impact the the edge of the other glass door. Two 75 lb glass panels pushed toward each other represents a tremendous amount of force, all focused on a 1” diameter metal rod. Result: explosion of glass. Neither of us foresaw the danger, yet there it was. 

Even had we seen the danger of metal handles and replaced them with rubber or plastic there are reports of spontaneous tempered glass explosions. Nickel sulphide contamination during manufacture can cause tempered glass to spontaneously shatter. In my opinion, glass is simply not appropriate for shower doors.

The whole thing was a perverted Edsel Murphy’s Law:
“Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.”

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