Emergency personnel were called Wednesday to a Fort Walton Beach, Fla., home where a man accidentally started a fire with rubbing alcohol and a cigarette, NWFDailyNews.com reported.
The man told deputies he was sitting on his bed cleaning an infection on his foot with the alcohol about 10:30 a.m., said Battalion Chief Shannon Stone of the Fort Walton Beach Fire Department, according to the website.
Some alcohol spilled on the sheets, the man told authorities, and when his cigarette touched the spill, a fire started. Stone said he did not know why the cigarette contacted the bedclothes.
The man pulled the sheets off and left to get something to put out the fire with, the NWFDailyNews.com reported. But when he returned, the fire was much larger, and the man left the house and called 911, the site reported.
“I guess it is a little uncommon,” Stone told NWFDailyNews.com. “But that’s what he says. There’s no reason not to believe it.”
All the people in the house were able to get out safely, the website reported.
Stone told the site the single-family home suffered significant damage and was uninhabitable.
The fire was ruled accidental.