The One Thing You Should Never Leave in Your Pocket on Laundry Day

Emptying your pockets before doing the laundry will not only keep your washer and dryer from damage, but will also keep you out of harm’s way.

In the port city of A Coruna in Spain, a dryer at a laundromat burst into a fiery explosion, narrowly injuring a customer who had left mere seconds before the incident. The cause of the blast? A lighter that had been left inside a customer’s pocket.

In the following clip, you see a man leaving the establishment. Then, moments later, a dryer comes to a stop and its door flings open, tossing out its contents before exploding. The shockwave is so strong, the store’s glass shatters and the signage outside is ripped off. Thankfully, there were no reported injuries.

“Looks like the opening scene to an action movie,” a Twitter user said, while another added: “That guy had a guardian angel looking out for him.”

The incident had authorities urging the public to always check their pockets for flammable materials such as lighters, chargers, and power banks, before putting clothes in the laundry.

“The message is always to check your pockets, not only for the tissues that turn your clothes into a white mess but more importantly for the modern conveniences such as batteries and lighters,” Superintendent Adam Dewberry from NSW Fire and Rescue told Yahoo News Australia.

He added, “Lithium-Ion batteries can also ignite if damaged by the tossing and spinning actions of a washing machine or dryer. Plus, the dryer has added risk with the elevated temperature used to dry the clothes.”

According to the National Fire Protection Association, there are nearly 14,000 dryer-related home fires annually. So even though doing the laundry can be boring, always be alert when it comes to checking for items that could damage your machine as well as the rest of your house.