Electrical Stove Fire!

Rob and I have a pathetic stovetop consisting of two electrical burners. It is so small we can't fit two pans next to each other without one coming up onto the dials. Hence, we try to keep things simple in cooking and use our little toaster oven when we can. Yesterday at the Ferney-Volatire farmer's market I bought a three dozen little neck clams. I have been wanting to make a fermented black bean clam dish since receiving the car package from my parents. Tonight was the night!

Everything started out okay. The rice was steaming on front burner and the clams were steaming away with the lovely fragrance of ginger, garlic, and black beans on the back. I started to see odd smoke that wasn't steam rising from the countertop. At first, it didn't seem like anything unusual. With an electric stove, often there are little bits of crumbs that burn off the bottom of pans or something will fall out of the pan and smoke up on the hot burner. This smoke was different. This smoke was coming from underneath the counter and I called Rob over to check it out. I picked up the pot of clams and stood there holding it. Rob immediately turned off the burners and heard a "Woosh" from under the counter. Did the fire go out when the power got turned off? When we opened the cabinet, a big cloud of awful smelling smoke billowed out and we opened the windows to let it out. The rice wasn't quite done yet, and we let it sit on the residual heat of the burner till dinner was ready.

We have written our landlord to see what we should do. We vaguely remember her saying to please call a plumber if the toilet is stuck since she would obviously do the same. And we agreed to not call about the little things. This doesn't seem like a little thing. This seems different. Anybody know tenant/landlord laws in Switzerland? I am not sure if we are responsible and have to replace it. It's not like we did anything unusual and abused it. We just wanted some black bean clams!