Well, this is certainly unfortunate. From Yahoo News.
Fire officials in New Bedford, Mass., say a man using a blowtorch to melt ice on his back porch ended up setting his house on fire, causing up to $30,000 in damage.
Fire Capt. Scott Kruger tells The Standard-Times of New Bedford that no one was injured during Monday’s incident at the three-story home.
Kruger says the man was using a torch hooked up to a 20-pound propane cylinder. He got too close to the building’s wood frame and ignited the vinyl siding. The fire quickly spread into the building’s second- and third-floor apartments.
Now a lot of folks are going to look at this and say; “Guy got what he deserved, you don’t melt ice off of your porch with a blowtorch. What the hell did he think was going to happen?”
However, I have empathy for this guy for, I too have started an embarrassing fire while screwing around with a blowtorch.
A strange thing happens when you get comfortable wielding a blowtorch; you start thinking about using the torch for jobs that it was never intended, like melting ice or stripping multiple coats of lacquer over spray off of a painting table. The blowtorch is just so powerful and so much faster than conventional methods.
Now, I’m not talking about the piddly little devices they use on the Food Channel to caramelize the top of a creme brulee. I’m talking about something more along these lines…
photo found at Zangobob’s Blow Torch Heaven
It’s the lure of the torch. The torch will perform yeoman’s work for you but, at some point it calls to you; “Come over here friend, light me up, do something butt stupid”. So, don’t be too hard on $30,000 damage to his own house blowtorch guy. He’s probably learned his lesson.
And, in that spirit, let’s rock to the excellent “Hell On Wheels” by the delightful Betty Blowtorch.
As always, make sure you have the proper oxygen to acetylene mixture before sparking up then, click pause on the music player located in the side bar before playing the YouTube.
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