When electrical attacks

When I got home on Tuesday I learned from En that the dishwasher had stopped working.She'd done the standard cleaning and stuff to it but it just seemed to not do anything on the front panel. No lights, nothing.My first instinct was that this was a power issue, not specifically a dishwasher issue.Step one: take off the kick plate and verify that the circuit was live.Here's what I saw:Oy.That's a bit melty.I checked with my non-contact electrical tester and sure enough the now bare wire was hot. The black stranded wire from the dishwasher was obviously not hot since it wasn't attached any more.A bit of guessing with the breaker box I found the circuit for the dishwasher (unlabeled of course). I had enough extra from the wall drop that I just chopped off the entire end and started fresh. Sure enough things worked fine.My guess is there was a bad connection at the wire nut that led to some arcing and heating that melted off the insulation of the hot wire from the wall.The offending wire nut wasn't even attached any more. And a bit charred and melty.The remnants of the wires. You could tell a lot of heat had been injected into that box. It's good that the entire thing is enclosed in a metal box otherwise I'm sure this could have easily started a fire! :-O