Fat Lady's Moist Panties Save Family from Peril

LONDON, England (AP) -- From baggy briefs to the ultimate hotpants: A British woman's underwear saved the day by doubling as an emergency fire blanket when her kitchen caught fire.

John Marsey and his cousin Darren Lines were frying bread in Jenny Marsey's kitchen in Hartlepool, northeast England, on Sunday when their meal caught fire.

Lines grabbed the nearest thing from a pile of laundry to put it out: his aunt's billowing, powder blue, size XL underpants.

He ran them under the faucet and tossed them onto the flames, successfully smothering the fire, a spokesman for the Cleveland Fire Brigade said, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with department policy.

Lines' swift thinking saved the kitchen -- but left his aunt's underwear slightly scorched.

"It could have been a lot worse," she said. "My family could have been in hospital but the knickers saved the day. I'm just grateful to the boys."

The fire official said the general principle of using a large, wet cloth to cover a grease fire was a sound one.

As for using underwear: "Clearly it depends on what size you are -- but I don't want to go there."

Source [CNN]

White House Confirms Important Documents Destroyed in this week's Fire on the third floor of the Eisenhower Executive Office building

On Wednesday, the White House confirmed that a quickly contained blaze isolated to a storage room utility closet on the third floor of the Eisenhower Executive Office building destroyed these records.

Some of the items included in that complete list:

• All Executive Branch internal correspondence since January, 2001
• No-bid Halliburton contracts
• Florida 2000 election over-votes
• Valerie Plame and the White House investigation of the leak (W.H. UPDATE: no records of Valerie Plame investigation destroyed as there was no investigation)
• Bush’s vacation records
• The 5 million missing emails
• Joe Lieberman’s Democratic Party membership card

Source [J-Walk]

Woman catches fire during hemorrhoid operation

Sweden's welfare board has criticized a hospital in Stockholm after a 40-year-old woman caught fire during a hemorrhoid operation, Aftonbladet reports.

While the woman's piles were successfully removed by doctors at Ersta Hospital, she ended up leaving the surgery in September with a partially burned backside.

In addition to the hemorrhoids, the woman was also in hospital to have a lump removed with the aid of electrosurgery. The accident took place after a nurse had cleaned the woman's skin with an antiseptic solution.

With some of the highly flammable liquid having trickled under the women's body, the patient caught fire when staff switched on the electrical current and began operating.

By the time the nurse succeeded in putting out the fire, the woman had been left with three red burn marks. She later made several return visits to the hospital in order to be treated for her new injuries.

The National Board of Health and Welfare (Socialstyrelsen) has now ordered the hospital to draft a set of written procedures to ensure that patients are not exposed to similar risks in future.

Source [TheLocal]