July 14, 2006

• Sometimes it's hard to feel sorry for someone.  What's the old saying about stupidity being the one sin always punished?  Something like that, anyway.  Believe it or not, yesterday evening at a hospital over in Dallas (they grow 'em dumb in Dallas, apparently), a man wearing an oxygen mask managed to light a cigarette.  

  Oh, that worked well:

  A patient
  wearing an oxygen mask lit a cigarette and ignited a fire Thursday that
  charred his room at Methodist Dallas Medical Center, fire officials
  said.

  The man suffered significant burns and was taken to
  Parkland Memorial Hospital, said Kim Hollon, an executive vice
  president of the Methodist Health System.

  The fire broke
  out about 7:45 p.m. on the hospital's 10th floor and forced 114
  patients to move. No one besides the man was seriously hurt.

  "He somehow got the strength to smoke a cigarette with a nonremovable
  [oxygen] mask," said Dallas Fire-Rescue Capt. Paul Martinez.

  "I don't know how he did it, but he did it."

  The automatic sprinkler in the room prevented the blaze from becoming a
  larger emergency, Capt. Martinez said.

  A nurse quickly pulled the patient from his burning bed. Nearby machinery melted.

  
  "The fire would have advanced to the hallway horizontally and then
  vertically. Instead of eight or nine alarms, it was just two alarms,"
  Capt. Martinez said. "Everything worked like it was supposed to."

  Somehow I don't think Methodist Dallas Medical Center's going to be willing to have him back.

  • 8:27 am
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