Rechargeable heated insoles ‘explode’ and burn man’s foot. ‘Like a knife stabbed me’

A man suffered severe burns when one of his rechargeable heated insoles “exploded” as he wore his boots.

“THEY WERE NOT EVEN ON,” said Mikaela Morris, the wife of Tyler Morris, in a Dec. 13 Facebook post.

Tyler Morris, of Trimont, Minnesota, now has second-degree burns and the possibility of third-degree burns following the malfunction, his wife said.

The $55.99 iHeat Heated Insoles were purchased off Amazon by the couple in 2023, according to a photo shared by the wife.

Tyler Morris told KARE the insoles had not been working well prior to this incident, but he kept them inside his boots for comfort. He said he felt a “sharp pain in his right foot” when he put his boots on Dec. 12.

“It just felt like a knife stabbed me in my heel,” he said in an interview with KARE. “Then it started getting super, super hot, and I started freaking out, and there was white smoke just billowing out of my boot.”

His wife took him to a hospital, and he later received treatment from a Hennepin County burn center, she said in the Facebook post.

Photos show part of the man’s foot had melted off, leaving it charred.

Doctors told the man he may need skin grafts, KARE reported.

Mikaela Morris said her husband was the third person in the week to be treated at the burn center due to heated insoles exploding.

The insoles are no longer available for purchase on Amazon, but they still can be found directly from the China-based company at iheatgroup.com.

Trimont is about a 135-mile drive southwest from Minneapolis.

In a similar case last year, a man from Burlington in Alberta, Canada, said he purchased heated insoles off Amazon from a China-based manufacturer. While wearing them for work, Shayne Lemieux heard a “loud pop” and felt his foot begin to “heat up.”

“I see my sock’s on fire and smoking, so I tried to smack it off but it was stuck to my foot,” Lemieux told the Toronto Sun. “I saw the skin was peeled back and charred, but I didn’t feel anything, I think it was the adrenaline.”

Like Morris, Lemieux said the heated insoles were not activated, the Sun reported.

This story was originally published December 17, 2024 at 9:01 AM with the headline "Rechargeable heated insoles ‘explode’ and burn man’s foot. ‘Like a knife stabbed me’."