Crystal ball sets unforeseen fire

By JOHN COLES

Published: Today

A WOMAN'S home has been wrecked by a freak fire sparked by the sun shining on a crystal ball on her window sill.

The £20 ornament refracted the rays straight into the back of Kim Yeates's TV which overheated and exploded, igniting a nearby sofa.

Kim, 53, who lived alone, was out visiting a friend and returned to find £10,000's worth of damage caused to her first-floor flat.

Firefighters blamed the 4in-diameter glass sphere she had kept in her window in Worle, Somerset.

The property is owned by a housing association and Kim, a former BBC production assistant, has been told it will take at least eight weeks to repair.

She has been forced into temporary accommodation in the meantime — but has lost most of her possessions for good because she had no insurance.

She said: "My life has been totally wrecked by this crystal ball. I've got no insurance and almost everything I owned was in the flat.

Rescue

"The fireman said that this is the first time he has ever heard of a crystal ball causing a fire in his 25 year career. He was just as surprised as me.

"I used to love looking at the crystal ball and watching the sunlight come through it but I wish I had never bought it now.

"I'm completely devastated."

Neighbour Neil Clarke, 28, discovered the fire and bravely climbed through a window to rescue Kim, thinking she was trapped inside.

When he discovered she was not there he turned off the gas taps and fled as firefighters arrived.

They got the blaze under control before finding the crystal ball, barely touched by the flames, lying under the window sill.

They later told Kim that the ornament, which she bought from an art gallery shop three years ago, was the cause of the fire.

She added: "I want to say a big thank you to Neil because he was very brave trying to rescue me.

"But I still can't sleep at night worrying about what would have happened if I'd been at home when the fire started."

A spokeswoman for Avon Fire and Rescue Service today confirmed the crystal ball was to blame for the fire.

She said: "The homeowner had a crystal ball on the window sill and direct sunlight refracted through it into her living room.

"It then set light to the television near the sofa and caused the fire we attended.

"We do have incidences of this nature but it's very uncommon for this to happen."

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Thomas...if he would put some nail polish on those toes....it wouldn't look as bad

I'm sure you are wrong

The flip-flop is the preferred summer shoe for many New Yorkers. But on city streets, the flimsy footwear can be deadly.

That film of grime that coats your feet at the end of a day of flopping around town is some dangerous dirt.

Lab tests of two reporters' flip-flops, worn for four days, revealed a potentially deadly germ - Staphylococcus aureus - lurking on the rubber.

If it seeps into a cut on your foot - an entirely common summer affliction - the bacteria can enter the bloodstream and, if left untreated, kill you.

"It can make you pretty sick if it got into a wound and into your blood, where it could attack any of your internal organs," says Dennis Kinney, Ph.D., the manager of the microbiology lab at EMSL Analytical. "If you didn't treat it with antibiotics, you could die from it."

Kinney's team at EMSL tested two pairs of flip-flops we wore throughout the city for four days each.

The sandals took a trip on the F, A, C, G, 2 and 3 trains, went on walks through Prospect Park, out to bars in the West Village, to a Cyclones baseball game in Coney Island and rode the Cyclone. Twice. They even waded through a murky public restroom at the Coney Island subway station.

The results? Pretty heinous.

The $3.50 flip-flops harbored approximately 18,100 bacteria of the five most prevalent varieties found. (Unsurprisingly, the pair that made the trip to Coney Island and stopped off in the public restroom had roughly 13,900 more bacteria.)

And that's what accumulated in just four days.

"If you wear shoes for three months, 93% have fecal bacteria and 20% have E. coli," says Dr. Charles P. Gerba, professor of microbiology at the University of Arizona.

While some of the bacteria found were common, non-disease-causing staphylococci, more dangerous offenders lurked underfoot.

Aerococcus viridans and Rothia mucilaginosa, bacteria that normally reside in the mouth, were present.

"It's not a good sign," says Kinney. "It means that people are spitting. If someone were sick and spitting on the ground, you could pick something up."

Not to mention the worst offender, Staph aureus. Worst-case scenario: It enters your bloodstream, goes untreated and you die. But even mere contact with the skin can yield nasty results.

"Staph aureus can be pretty dangerous," says Kinney. "This strain isn't methicillin-resistant (MRSA), but it is Staph aureus, and it can still cause infections - typically boils and skin infections."

Still not convinced, flip-flop lovers? Here's a compelling argument for putting on a pair of shoes:

"There's more bacteria in the city," says Dr. Philip M. Tierno Jr., the director of clinical microbiology and immunology at New York University's Langone Medical Center. "There's garbage and rat-doo. This city is strewn with rats, and rats are harbingers of all sorts of germs. The same is true with cockroaches. It is all potentially harmful."

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say what? my pusseeeeeeeeeeeeeee does not download, but he plays with the printer...

so... m still in the dark...


plz... tell me wht the games abt...

Hi everyone!

For my Blue Eyes!!!

Hey Thomas! For you!!!

Restore is what I meant. It can fix a virus problem though, if done properly. Depends when the virus hit and the restore point, if the restore is before the virus...it gets rid of the virus. Although system restore tends to cause more problems, so I don't typically use it.