Dishwashers are catching fire across the country, charring kitchens and filling homes with smoke, a Scripps Television Station Group investigation has found.

In interviews with families from Baltimore to San Diego, a dozen homeowners described how their malfunctioning appliances started billowing smoke or flames.

“You think: ‘It’s got water, how can it catch on fire?’ ” said Ken Logan of Kansas City, Mo.

Yet on Thanksgiving morning last year, Logan’s kitchen was consumed with smoke and flames before firefighters arrived and stopped the blaze. Inspectors have not attributed the fire to any cause, but Logan told NBC Action News in Kansas City that the blackened remains of his kitchen show his dishwasher was to blame.

Logan’s not alone. Federal officials have received more than 1,000 complaints over the last five years about dishwashers causing fires or smoke, according to records Scripps obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

Officials at the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, which receives the complaints and uses them to work with companies to craft fixes, said they are “investigating thoroughly” cases of dishwasher fires.

“To date, most of the fire or smoldering incidents were contained inside of the dishwasher, where the lack of oxygen and combustible materials prevented a larger incident from occurring,” commission spokesman Scott Wolfson said. “In the past two decades, we have announced 15 voluntary recalls of dangerous or faulty dishwashers.”