Elizabeth Angamarca was making dinner in her pressure cooker on Halloween when it exploded, leaving her with second- and third-degree burns that have now kept her hospitalized for more than a week. She checked the vent beforehand, saw no steam escaping, and believed it was safe to open before everything went wrong in an instant.
“No steam came out; nothing came out of it. So I thought, ‘OK, it’s safe,’” Angamarca said, according to WKRN News 2. When the cooker blew, she immediately got into the shower before being taken to a Dickson-area hospital and then transferred to Vanderbilt University Medical Center for more specialized care.
Angamarca said two pork chops happened to stick to the outside of the cooker during the blast, and she believes that detail may have kept her injuries from being even worse. “Two pork chops got stuck on the outside of it… and thank God they did because it could have got worse,” she said, per the same report. She also said she was thankful the explosion happened to her rather than her son.
Nine Days In, Skin Grafting Ahead
As of the WKRN report, Angamarca was on day nine of her hospital stay and preparing for skin grafting Tuesday. She is accepting donations through her Venmo account to help cover medical bills, the outlet noted. The road to recovery for severe pressure-cooker burns can be long, according to doctors who treat these injuries regularly at Vanderbilt.
Anne Wagner, a burn surgeon and director of the Vanderbilt Burn Center, said the hospital sees around three to four severe pressure-cooker burns a year, and that some patients suffer burns across several parts of their bodies when a cooker fails. Wagner said she knew of at least one patient who died from burns caused by a pressure cooker, after injuries so significant that she ultimately did not survive them.
Why These Blasts Happen
Wagner explained that food can block a pressure cooker’s steam port, creating a false impression that it is safe to open even when pressure remains trapped inside. She said that if a cooker does blow, it can spray scalding liquid throughout an entire room, not just at the person standing closest to it.
To reduce the risk, Wagner urged parents to keep children out of the room while a pressure cooker is in use and cautioned against overfilling the appliance. She also urged users to stay up to date on safety notices, noting that several pressure-cooker models have been recalled over the years.
A Pattern Beyond One Kitchen
Wagner said there have been 177 official reports of pressure-cooker burns since 2010, even as the appliances have become kitchen staples nationwide. She pointed out that the top 10 best-selling electric pressure cookers sold 215,000 units in a single Amazon Prime Day, underscoring how many of the devices are now in American homes.
Government regulators have flagged safety issues with specific models in the past. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission warned consumers to immediately stop using certain Gourmia pressure cookers over a serious burn hazard, after receiving five reports of incidents in which hot contents were expelled under pressure, four of which involved severe burn injuries. The agency has also noted a recall of 1.8 million SharkNinja Foodi multi-function pressure cookers tied to a burn hazard, with serious burn injuries reported in that case as well.
Angamarca’s injury is not an isolated kind of accident. A Massachusetts woman identified as C.A. in a product liability case said her Instant Pot lid popped off while she was rotating it, spraying hot soup across her chest, stomach, hands, and foot, according to a page published by the law firm Johnson//Becker. For now, Angamarca is focused on recovery and sharing her story so other families approach their own kitchen appliances with caution.
