JOPPA, Md. — Surveying the damage inside Anthony Tates’ home on Staysail Drive in Joppa, you may find it hard to believe that it all started with a novelty bear keychain lighter, just over two inches tall, which he had just purchased through Amazon.
Watch as the homeowner decides between putting the fire out or escaping
"I went to light it, flick it, and it just blew up in my hand and my arm was on fire and my pants and everything,” recalled Tates, “and I’m trying to put it out and everything like that and I finally got it out, but there was another part of it smoldering in the back of me so that really caught fire and just the whole sofa just burst into flames.”
Caught by surprise, the wheelchair-bound Tates found himself torn between trying to extinguish the fire or racing to get out through the only exit door from the ground floor.
“My daughter was upstairs and she smelled smoke,” Tates told us, “She came downstairs, and she said, ‘Come on, Dad. It’s a fire’, and I said, ‘Well, we can put it out.’ She said, ‘No, you need to come outside,’ and that’s what I did.”
The estimated damage to the house and and its contents is $50,000, but still, Tates is counting himself lucky that his residential water sprinklers limited the fire from spreading until firefighters arrived to extinguish the flames.
An In Focus look at automatic sprinkler requirements for homes
“As soon as it started smoking and the detector, the sprinklers picked it up, the water came on right away,” the victim assured us.
Tates also is thankful his son and grandson weren’t home at the time, when the joy of receiving an Amazon delivery was followed by the shock of an explosion and subsequent fire over an item that appeared to be a bargain until it wasn’t.
“14 dollars,” laughed Tates, “and it caused that much damage so that told me my smoking days is over.”
