90-year-old smoker injured when her oxygen tank causes fire

Derek says: "This woman probably isn't eligible for a Darwin award, but there's a macabre irony to the thought of someone igniting the oxygen tank keeping her alive because she was smoking. It's even worse because, according to the article, this is the second time she's done it." Link

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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gollux

This is so common. A woman completely torched her house here and died in the conflagration about six months ago. The cigarettes caused her emphysema in the first place and continued smoking caused her flambe style death in the end. The oxygen served to accelerate the process from a simple smoldering incident to a rather intense fire.
robgonzo

Wouldn’t it be more correct in the headline to say her cigarette caused the fire? Or perhaps “90-year-old smoker injured when her oxygen tank catches fire from cigarette”.
White Noise

The headline is missing a strategic ‘r’, which renders it nonsensical.
TonyB.

My Grandmother did this to herself twice as well! The condo association almost kicked her out because of it, but because she was a lottery winner she had the money to make them forget about it. It was all very strange when it happened.
bort

White Noise: I think it’s even more tragic if a ninety year old smoke was injured. Those things age like wine.
Sam

An oxygen fire?

Too bad they haven’t invented the, you know, whatever device.
Bryan Price

My wife’s ex does this. Sucking down a cig while partaking of oxygen is just stupid. He just hasn’t caught anything on fire.

Yet.
obeyken

Not to be a stickler but oxygen itself doesn’t actually ignite, right? I believe it’s more like an excess of oxygen causes a cigarette to burn much, much faster than it ought to.
Phikus

It’s a karma catch clause. If you live to be 90 and are still smoking, it will kill you much faster!
Joe

Clearly this only underlines the fact that authorities need to ban oxygen. It is odorless, colorless and nicotine-less.

Where are the special interest groups on this one??
Tgg161

This happens frequently enough that this type of accident has made the ‘no longer weird‘ list at NotW.