Did A Wii Burn Down This Man’s House?
Trevor Pellegrin, a Colorado native who lives in his RV and watches standard-definition Netflix from a Nintendo Wii on his tube TV (because Colorado), went out for a while and came back to find his entire vehicle in flames. “I was coming back from a meeting and a I got a phone call from my neighbor that my camper was on fire. I was crying, I was screaming, I was still trying to get my things out of there,” he told the KK-TV of Colorado Springs. Authorities suspect the console may have caught fire while plugged in.
The Wii, which now looks like a haunted Wii from a horror movie that pale scraggly-haired children would crawl out of, was taken in for inspection by insurance adjusters. If evidence can be found within that it shorted out, Trevor could be in for a cash settlement.
The original Wii contained a feature called WiiConnect24 that would allow it to update itself even when turned off — only when this mode was kept on, the Wii was never truly “off.” It constantly drew around ten watts of power, and it did get noticeably warm to the touch. After hearing stories about Wiis malfunctioning with this mode left on, I turned it off and then outright unplugged the Wii when it was not in use. This is an extra step I’ve had to take with all current consoles, which suck more watts per hour than the Wii did.
Fire investigators told Trevor “all other possible sources of ignition have been ruled out” and that they’re 99% certain the console did it.