Delivered Package Ignites On Eagle Mountain Front Porch

EAGLE MOUNTAIN, Utah – As the Beehive State saw record-setting temperatures, one Eagle Mountain woman said a package delivered to her home ignited on the front porch.

Drive through almost any neighborhood in Eagle Mountain and you’re likely to see American flags, basketball hoops, even gardens. 

But if you passed Anna Bean’s home Thursday afternoon at a certain time, you would’ve seen something else.

It was hot in Utah yesterday… especially on the front porch of an Eagle Mountain house. The woman says a package delivered to her home with headphones in it and started burning from the inside. She’s glad she was home to put it out. @KSL5TV at 5 and 6 #ksltv pic.twitter.com/U33SCvhzt3

— Alex Cabrero (@KSL_AlexCabrero) July 31, 2020

“I smelled something at first and I thought at first, oh, OK, somebody is barbequing outside. I was jealous,” she said with a laugh.

It wasn’t a barbeque she was smelling, but something was burning.

“So I peeked outside on my front porch and I just saw fire,” said Bean. “And at first, it didn’t register right away, like, you don’t expect to see fire on your front porch.”

It was coming from a package that had recently been delivered to her home.

The bottle of water she had wasn’t enough to put it out.

“I put the baby on the floor, dropped the phone, grabbed more water and just put it out,” she said.

The package contained two noise-canceling headphones she had recently ordered online.

There are some stories about electronics like cell phones and headphones that combust.

Some of those devices are punctured, pressurized or improperly charged — all sorts of things.

Bean said it was hot outside, and Eagle Mountain saw temperatures in the 90s.

“When we were looking at the batteries, they were also enclosed in plastic, so whether the batteries got hot in the truck and the plastic kept the heat from evaporating, and it just combusted the headphones,” she said.

There is no official investigation on what caused the headphones to burn. 

Bean said she did get a full refund and suggested if she were to order them again, she would make two separate orders so the headphones weren’t packaged together.

She’s just happy the package wasn’t inside her house.

“This could’ve been bad. It’s not bad now,” she said. “But it could’ve been bad if nobody was home.”