ATLANTA – “It wasn’t a boom, it wasn’t a pop…it was a Kaboom. It sounded like a bomb. My walls rattled. It shook the house up. I screamed. It was a real freak out moment.” These are the words of a Grant Park woman who is claiming that an electronic cigarette she purchased with the intention of getting healthy, exploded, shooting flames across her living room, charring a sofa and a rug.

Elizabeth Wilkowski used the rag in the picture above to protect her hand when she removed the E-cigarette from her computer’s USB port where it had been charging.

“If I hadn’t had been home, I would have lost my dogs, I would have lost my cats, I would have lost my house,” Wilkowski told a reporter.

But those words did not move a local retailer, Doris Holmes, who just opened her own e-cigarette shop. Holmes downplayed the events, “Anything that’s electronic and plugs into electricity, you have the potential for it catching on fire. I don’t leave my dishwasher running when I leave my home.”

According to E-cigarette trade association figures there are roughly 3.5 million of the devices in use.

Photo WSBTV.com