ukewarrior wrote:Wow,
The reason question is why didn't a breaker trip during that time !
I would guess that it wasn't a short circuit, therefore didn't trip the breaker. It sounds like the stress on the connector narrowed the contact area (metal to metal) down to such a small area that it overheated and set the plastic on fire. While melting the connector conductors.
I had a similar occurrence on my hot tub pump plug. Weather induced corrosion caused the connection resistance to increase to the point where the connection overheated, without causing a short and blowing the breaker.
<Chas>