I’m guessing that most places have laws that require doors be removed from refrigerators when they are junked. I wonder, though, if the law is useless now? I’ve seen old-fashioned refrigerators from, like, the early-'60s that had latches; the doors latched closed. If a child got into a junked fridge and closed the door, he could suffocate. But modern refrigerators don’thave latches. They seem to close with a magnet or something. A child who got inside could just push it open, unless someone knocked it over on its door.
Have the laws been updated to account for the ‘new’ non-latching doors? Or are door still required to be removed from all dis-used refrigerators?
Heck, I’m an adult, and sometimes I have to pull really hard to get my fridge open from the outside – it seals up just right or something. I’d say a panicked child still has a pretty good chance of getting trapped, and the law is still a good idea.
A child might be playing hide-n-seek and willingly stay inside long enough that he’d get light headded and pass out. Pushing the door open wouldn’t be an option any more.
There’s the possibility a fridge would be lying on its back, so the kid would have to be able to reach the door and push its full weight up and over - certainly not possible for all three-year-olds.
A refrig on its side[with its door facing up] can be likened to a coffin. Likewise, a refrig with its door facing a wall in which a kid can squeeze through can become a sarcophagus. Refrigs are made to be airtight.
There are still 60-s era fridges being thrown away, relics and rare but still out there.
Not to hijack but I once worked in a guys house with a water heater that dated to the fourties.
Once helped “vent” a 'frige with over two hundred rounds of ammo. When we put it on the curb we had the police stop and tell us that even with the holes, the door had to come off. When I pulled the door open, it fell off. Cops said “good enough”
Dan Ackroyd as the sleezeball businessman Arthur Mainway describing the ‘Winter Wonderland’ section of his low-rent amusement park as, “A glicening palace, of ice and snow”.
To which Jane Curtain, as the outraged talk show host, responds, “No it isn’t Mr Mainway, its a field of abandoned refrigerators!”
What you do now is you use a sharp knife of some kind and cut all the way around the rubber door seals, and then pull the magnetic-edge part of the seal off. And you still wouldn’t want to lay it down coffin-style, but with the magnetic seal gone, the door has nothing really to hold it closed.
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When we bought our new fridge the company we bought it from did a pick up on our old one (we had to move it out to the end of our driveway, like we do with our trash can), we were instructed to duct tape the doors shut, but we didn’t have to remove them.
My property management company was once sited for putting an intact refrigerator out on the curb. Believe me, after my 10 minute rant, that will never be done again.
