Four freaky fridges – refrigeration disasters and other weird tales

March 2nd, 2012

Appliance Talk Fridges & Freezers Kitchen

There’s an old joke that goes something like: “This milk is so old, it should be eligible to vote!”

*cue laugh track*

For many of us, this is funny because at one time or another, it was true.  We’ve all been there – maybe years ago, or just last week, we’ve all left something in the fridge for so long that by the time we rediscovered it, it was just about ready to walk out on its own and head straight into a polling booth.

Today we’ll take a look at a couple of refrigeration disasters, as well as a couple of strange things that people have kept in their fridges…

Office fridge becomes a genuine health hazard

Like many workplaces, we do our best here at Appliances Online to keep our office fridge as tidy and organised as we can.  We don’t always succeed though, meaning every so often our fridge needs a bit of a cleanse and purge.

But at least we’ve never needed a hazmat team.

In 2009, office workers in  San Jose, California, decided to do the right thing and clean out an old office fridge that had long been turned off.  While the fridge’s rotted contents were no doubt pretty vile, the real problems began when they started spraying with a chemical cleaner…

The resulting reaction between the cleaner and the mold reportedly created such a stink that the office building’s 325 workers had to be evacuated, with 28 people suffering vomiting and nausea and 7 having to be hospitalised, while a hazmat team, normally reserved for dealing with chemical spills, radioactive fallout and disease epidemics, removed the toxic fridge.

Post-hurricane fridges become art

Returning from evacuation following Hurricane Katrina, many citizens of New Orleans, Louisiana found that after extensive flooding and weeks without power, the food in their fridges had not only decomposed and spoiled, but become toxic and acidic enough to completely destroy the fridge interiors.

Taped shut to seal the horrors inside, lines of busted fridges outside of suburban homes became a part of the post-hurricane landscape, in addition to flood damage, flattened trees and wrecked roofs.

But as New Orleans is a party town with a unique sense of humour, its residents soon began turning these fridges into art, adding jokes and decorations.  Soon the Katrina Fridge became another icon of the city’s culture, with the following year’s Mardi Gras parade featuring floats of fridges being depicted as on their way to “fridge heaven.”

Awwwww…

“This fridge smells like CENSORED!”

We’re not the only ones with an interest in the sometimes terrifying contents of fridges.  According to this article, Alice Henneman, a registered dietitian with the University of Nebraska, once conducted a survey of the worst things people had found in office refrigerators:

“The two scariest examples were human stool samples stored in the same refrigerator as employee lunches, and cow manure samples refrigerated next to food items.”

We really, REALLY hope that these reports came from laboratory fridges where samples were being stored in appropriately sanitary and hygenic conditions.

Even so: Ew!

It came from… THE FRIDGE!

Speaking of scary things in fridges, late last year news broke about a Russian woman who claimed to have recovered an alien corpse from a UFO crash site near Petrozavodsk, and kept it in the fridge for two years.

Unfortunately, photos are all that’s left of this mysterious visitor from beyond the stars (or possibly a decayed vegetable), as it was apparently confiscated by men from the Karelian Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and has not (to our knowledge) been heard from since…

Probably best to let Agent Mulder take it from here…

Final thoughts…

If you ever suffer a sudden fridge disaster and need to sort out a replacement in a hurry, remember that you can quickly find a new model that suits your specifications at Appliances Online, including many with special features that make them easier to clean and maintain.

We’ll leave you with a question and a song.

The question:

What’s the strangest thing that you’ve ever found in a fridge?

The song:

A quick sample from Weird Al Yankovic’s Livin’ In The Fridge:

There’s something gross in the fridge today
It’s green and growin’ hair
It’s been there since July
If you can name the object
In that baggie over there
Then mister, you’re a better man than I