Cell phone lights pants on fine

I just followed a link from oboeinsight to discover this surreal story:

A Vallejo man was severely burned after an apparent cell phone malfunction ignited his pants pocket and touched off a fire in his hotel room.

Luis Picaso, 59, suffered second- and third-degree burns over 50 percent of his body and is in critical condition at UC-Davis Medical Center.

Vallejo firefighters arrived at Picaso’s room late Saturday night at a residential hotel at 419 Georgia St., to find the sprinkler system containing the fire and Picaso lying on the bathroom floor.

“It seems like this was just an accident,” Bill Tweedy, fire department spokesman, said. “Maybe the power button was depressed for a long time while in his pocket or there was some sort of short circuit in the phone.”

Picaso’s misfortune escalated because he was wearing flammable polyester and nylon clothes and sitting in a plastic chair when the fire began in his pocket.

“His clothes were pretty much made out of a petroleum product and when the chair ignited it became like melted gasoline and continued to fuel itself,” Tweedy said.

Read the complete story here.