A mum has told of her terror when her glass shower screen “exploded” while she and her family were sleeping, leaving her fearing it would happen again.
Cady Tran, her husband and their one-year-old son were in bed at their apartment in Bankstown, Sydney, around 6am on Sunday when they heard a huge “boom".
Cady, 27, said the loud noise woke them up, prompting them to bolt upright and rush to check their son was okay.
“Once we both found out he was safe, then we walked to where the cracking noise came from to see what’d happened,” she said.
“[It was] completely shattered.
Speaking to Yahoo News Australia, Cady described the incident as “a disaster”.
But while she was “shocked” by the incident she said she was grateful that they were not in the bathroom at the time.
“If it was on the weekday, we would be in the bathroom getting ready for the day and things would be very different,” she said.
The mum said she now lived in fear that it would happen again in their second ensuite bathroom.
She and her husband tried to clean up the mess but ended up with “cuts all over” their hands, she said, so called it quits.
Next, they contacted the agent for their rental apartment, though as of Thursday no one had been sent over to clean and fix the glass screen.
“We cleaned most of it but still there are so many pieces that we can’t risk ourselves to do it,” Ms Cady wrote in a Facebook post about the terrifying ordeal.
“I’m still in shock and panic and scared this will happen again,” she said.
Cady’s Facebook post had struck a chord with social media users, many of whom detailed their own experiences with glass shower screens suddenly shattering.
“We had EXACTLY the same thing happen to us....but with two little kids inside showering! Luckily only a couple of cuts — VERY SCARY!” one woman wrote.
Another woman said she and her son sustained cuts to their feet after their glass door broke - while they were in the shower.
In terms of a cause of the bizarre occurrences, commenters gave a variety of causes.
While one person said they found a leak in their ensuite pipes, others attributed it to the type of materials in the glass, which, if inferior, could expand in the heat.
A woman who claimed she owned a glass business said a lot of shower screens were now being imported from China, and suggested the quality was sometimes subpar.
“Their toughening process is usually not great,” she said.
“Can also have a slight defect and the changes in temperature can make it shatter at any time,” she added.
US building consultant Mark Meshulam, who has testified as an expert about shower screens breaking, describes tempered glass as being “like a tightly wound spring”.
In an interview with US publication The Morning Call, Mr Meshulam said an internal flaw or damage like a crack or misaligned screw can cause glass screens to break.
“All of these little chips and cracks that are tiny, tiny, tiny, they can eventually turn into a failure and it will appear to be spontaneous,” he said.
Back in 2017 The Mirror reported on a baby who was “cut to shreds” after a shower screen exploded while she was taking a bath.
One-year-old Elsieè-Maie screamed out in pain as shards of glass blasted into the air before raining down onto her.
Horrified mum Stacy Richards, 24, said she heard what sounded “like a gun shot” as the glass shattered into pieces.
Stacy, from Denbighshire, Wales, said Elsieè-Maie's dad had to pluck the little girl from her arms as she was shaking so much.
The youngster was left with around a dozen cuts to her body, with one on her head and some on her back, hands, arms and legs, but Stacy said the incident “could have been a lot worse”.
At the time, Stacy, from Prestatyn, has urged other parents to make sure there’s aren’t cracked or compromised.
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