Elderly man trying to open bag of chips with lighter burns most of his body
An elderly man tried to use a lighter to open a bag of chips – only for it to go painfully awry.
The man opted for using a lighter when he was not able to get the bag open the conventional way on Wednesday afternoon, said Bruce Frazier, a spokesman for the city of Dalton, Georgia.
Frazier told the New York Post: ‘The victim… was using a lighter to open bags of chips which he was unable to do with his hands.
‘While doing this, the man accidentally set himself on fire while sitting in a recliner.’
Maintenance workers sprayed the man and the recliner with water using a hose.
He was rushed to a hospital in Chattanooga with third-degree burns over more than 75% of his body, according to Channel 2 Action News.
The man, who has not been identified, was then taken to a burn center.
His condition was not immediately known.
It was not clear if the chips, the bag, or another material caused fire to engulf the man.
What brand of chips the man was trying to eat was also unclear.
The incident took place at an apartment complex on the 2300 block of Sir Lancelot Place in Dalton, which is just over 30 miles southeast of Chattanooga, Tennessee, and about 90 miles northwest of Atlanta, Georgia.
Chips are considered a highly flammable food because of their composition.
‘Due to their mix of starch and oil, chips provide an almost perfectly combustible material for fires,’ reported VICE. ‘Food and lifestyle blogs have pointed out on several occasions that your average sack of chips can actually be used as kindling in emergency situations.’
In May 2016, two Canadian teenagers reportedly entered a Longo’s Supermarket in Vaughan, Ontario, and lit a bag of potato chips aflame and put them back on the shelf, then ran. A witness told Global News that the fire expanded immensely in a matter of seconds with other bags of chips as fuel and that the damage to the store exceeded $2million.
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.