The Consumer Product Safety Commission last week announced a voluntary recall of about 24,000 defective Perfect Flame Double Lid Four Burner gas grills. The recalled prodcuts, with model number GAC3615, were manufactured by Lucas Innovation Inc. of China and sold at Lowe’s home improvement stores in the United States from October 2007 through July 2008 for $300.

The danger posed by these defective grills is pretty serious. The cooking chamber of these gas grills can melt or catch on fire, thereby posing risk of fires and burn injuries to consumers. According to the CPSC alert, so far, there have been reports of 175 grill fires, 25 reports of grills melting. Some of these incidents resulted in property damage, but so far there have been no reports of injuries.

Owners of these grills are asked to stop using the grill immediately, disconnect the propane tank and return the defective products to any Lowe’s store for a full refund.

Consumer Reports’ product recall blog lists two complaints from its own readers relating to these recalled gas grills. One of their complaints cited the recalled model while another cited model number SLG2006, not included in this recall.

A Fox television station in Tulsa has also reported numerous problems with the SLG2006 model. According to the news station’s investigation, one Tulsa man reported that his Perfect Flame grill ignited and was engulfed in flames when he made a quick trip inside the house. He also reported that the grill exploded when he tried to put out the fire with a fire extinguisher, spraying shards of hot metal across his deck and yard.

Clearly, the SLG2006 has some serious problems and Consumer Reports got at least one report of injuries because of the gas grill igniting and/or exploding. These types of problems must be promptly reported to the CPSC. If you’ve had a similar problem with your Perfect Flame gas grill, please file a complaint with the CPSC on its “Unsafe Products” complaint Web site (). The CPSC’s recall system relies quite heavily on consumer complaints and without these complaints, dangerous and defective products such as these gas grills may never be recalled, thereby putting thousands of consumers at risk of injury or death.

If you or someone you know has been injured by a Perfect Flame gas grill or any other product, the California defective product attorneys at Bisnar | Chase would like to hear about it.