A flaming pumpkin candleholder sent a Des Moines woman to the emergency room with severe burns.
Holiday candleholders are something many people typically buy for their homes.
They were pulled off the shelves recently in at least one metro store.
"I couldn't even see the pumpkin. It was just a blaze of yellow fire. Flames were just licking up high," said Stephanie Martinez, who suffered burns on her hands.
Martinez said she discovered the burning candleholder after she left the room for five minutes on Monday night. She had been putting her daughter to bed in the other room.
"I got it in my hands and the wax spilled out all over. I dropped it here on the floor. You can see the burns there," she said.
"I knew if I went to the sink to fill up a glass of water by then anything could have happened. I felt my only choice was to just grab it," she said.
Martinez eventually got the candleholder to the sink and put out the fire, but the damage was already done.
"The only way I can describe it is like constantly having your hands on a hot plate. There's nothing you can do," she said.
Emergency room doctors told Martinez that she received second-degree burns. She said she was glad it did not get any worse.
"If I had been in there longer, my biggest fear is that it would have spread to the point where my daughter and I wouldn't have been able to get out of the apartment," she said. "Just thinking about it, my daughter means the world to me and if anything happened to her I just, especially for something stupid like this."
The next day, Martinez said she returned to the Windsor Heights Wal-Mart where she bought the candleholder to tell the retailer about what happened. She said the store immediately pulled all the Halloween candles from the shelves.
Martinez still has her pumpkin candleholder. She said she thinks the ventilation opening wasn't big enough and wants others to know it can pose a potential hazard.
"That was my biggest concern, is that these are going to be in people's homes with the potential to do the same thing," she said.
Wal-Mart was not able to tell NewsChannel 8 the brand name of the candleholder, but Martinez said they were small and ceramic and also came in the shape of witches and ghosts.
They sold for about 99 cents each.
Wal-Mart pulled only this specific kind of holiday candleholder off its shelves at the Windsor Heights store. It is still investigating to see if other stores have the candleholders.
A representative said that if they discover there more candleholders at other stores, they would remove them also. The store is not sure if they are selling statewide or nationwide, but it continues to investigate.
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