When the cold and rainy season begins to approach, many Malaysians will no doubt be seeking out for a nice serving of hot pot to help keep the chills at bay. With restaurants offering the dish popping up across the country at a rapid pace, there can be no denying its popularity among locals. However for one family, their hotpot dinner turned into an unthinkable nightmare when they suffered from first and second-degree burns after one of the stoves exploded during their meal.
WARNING: This post contains imagery of burn injuries that some may find uncomfortable.
M’sian family decided to have dinner at KL hotpot restaurant
In a post that was recently shared by local netizen Jason Chiu, he explained that he had been having dinner with his family at a hotpot restaurant located in Cheras. He explained that the concept of the restaurant was to serve meals with soup that are set over an open flame. At the time after having been served their food, the family started chatting among themselves while eating when one of the hot pot flames had suddenly gone out just after five minutes.
“This is our fifth time eating there, and during the previous four times, the open flame would only go out after twenty minutes.” he said.
Owing to that, they flagged down a somewhat older restaurant employee and asked for him to help relight the flame, which was done by using a flammable gel. As the tube containing the gel had almost run out, the older employee decided to first squeeze out an amount of gel from the tube away from any open flames for safety’s sake, before using it to ignite an open flame for the meal.
In attempting to reignite the flames, an explosion occurred
During that time, the flames on two other meals had also gone out at their table, so they wound up asking a younger employee to assist. Jason notes that the younger employee used a different approach when helping to reignite the flame, as she didn’t stand away from any open fires. Instead, they used the same bottle of almost completely empty gel and waved it about near the stoves.
It wouldn’t take long before disaster struck and an explosion took place, causing flames to erupt around the table.
“After the incident happened, the store owner said that the gel should not be applied near an open flame, and the employee said that she didn’t. But I noticced that there was still some small flames on the stove.
I couldn’t tell them the truth at the time as I was in hospital receiving treatment.” he adds.
As fire took place, Jason said it took the employees five minutes before they used a fire extinguisher to put it out. Instead, him and his family members had to hurriedly try to extinguish the flames on their own bodies, before his mother drove him to hospital for treatment.
“I felt a lot of pain in on my left hand, and my forehead was also bleeding,” he notes.
Two other employees from the restaurant proceeded to drive Jason’s father and his two younger sisters to the emergency unit, and promised that their restaurant would shoulder the burden for the cost of their medical treatment and follow-ups.
Decided to use their own insurance to pay for treatment first
Upon discussions among the family and the staff, they were told that the restaurant had stopped paying for their insurance premiums after the pandemic and no longer had any coverage for such accidents. They decided to first use his mother’s insurance to claim payment for the treatments first, and seek compensation later.
They also agreed among themselves to wait on Jason’s complete recovery before discussing on a compensation with the restaurant. Jason’s doctor diagnosed him with second-degree burns on his face, back, and left hand, and would need a full-month before recovering. One of his sisters needed a week before she recovered from first-degree burns to her left hand.
In October, they sent a letter of compensation to the restaurant and was informed that it would take them a week to respond.
“By that point, I had already realised that they were trying to delay the matter, but I decided to give them one month to resolve the matter privately owing to their sincerity. We didn’t make the matter public.
A month later, we received a reply from them denying our compensation request, before offering a completely unreasonable package of their own in return.”
Only offered RM4,000 compensation from the hotpot restaurant
The restaurant only offered a measly RM3,000 in compensation; RM2,000 in cash, and RM1,000 in vouchers. They later increased the amount to RM3,000 in cash, and RM1,000 in vouchers. The family turned it down.
Jason points out that the cost of his medical expenses has since reached close to RM30,000, in addition to his university tuition fees costing RM10,000 from a month’s absence. He was also earning RM5,000 from his part-time jobs, and his clothes had costed RM500.
Adding to this, he claims that his family has suffered psychological trauma owing to the incident and no longer dared to eat at restaurants serving food with an open flame. His family has since had to resort to legal channels to handle the matter, and hope that justice would be served.
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