One of my summer-weekend drinking buddies managed to cook himself but good Wednesday night.....AND had the whole building on edge doing it.

He passed out drunk in bed with a cigarette--so drunk that the smoke and flames on the mattress didn't wake him up. The heat sensor we all have in our units triggered the alarm.

By the time the fire department got here, they had to smash in the door to gain entry, haul his well-done carcass out into the hallway and resuscitate him. And again in the ambulance on the way to the hospital as I learned today.

He is in serious-but-stable condition in the burns unit and now has a LONG road to recovery ahead of him, if he ever does, both his cats are dead, the apartment is a total loss and will have to be stripped down to the concrete and completely re-built. Oh, and no insurance so he pretty much ruined financially now too. That was one expensive drunk-and-smoke !

He is a decent enough guy, for a raving drunk...broke his back at work about 10-12 years ago and has been wheel-chair and mobility-scooter bound ever since, and basically started drinking out of boredom. Fine with the beer but if he gets at a bottle of the hard stuff he goes at it and doesn't know how to just sip and enjoy. I've seen him go thru a bottle in under 2 hours....THEN need help to get upstairs and be tossed on his couch. Second time in life he has done it, last time he burned down a mobile home but got out unharmed thanks to some neighbors. NOT so lucky this time.

Kinda funny, but when the alarm went off at 1:30 am, the very FIRST thing that went thru my mind was "Sh*t, Ron fell asleep with a smoke." I'd seen him earlier in the evening and he had started on the New Years celebrations WAAYYY to early. I was right, just didn't think it would be this bad.

As convenient, cheap, and easy living in this area is, between the dopers, crime, and as I've seen this holiday season out-of-control parties, I GOTTA look at moving to a different area. Kinda sucks because EVERYTHING is literally within 4km of here. Crap, even Kim lives down on 5th floor--how easy is THAT for picking up a date without actually having to live together ?

My X's mother died that way. Smoked in bed dropped the cigarette, saw smoke, pulled back the covers a whoosh, engulfed in flames.

An employees son had a similar instance. Her grandson worked for me at the same time. His dad was a boozer and passed out with a lit cigarette in his mouth. Fortunately he got the fire out before it burned the trailer down. This time... I guess it had happened before and the mobile home burned to the ground. The grandmother was in no position to take on the 3 kids and had to call DHS on her son. They ended up removing the kids giving the oldest the option to stay with his grandmother here. He wouldn't leave his younger siblings. I guess they all are doing well now, no idea about the son. She just got back from a trip to Tennessee to see her great grand daughter on her 1st birthday. It was an awful decision for her, but clearly the right one.

I don't smoke.

I used to smoke. Always tried to put 'em out before I passed out, though.

True story... Years after the fact, I made a call to the parents of a girl who I used to like, when we were in school, to see how she was doing, and to hopefully reconnect.
Found out that she had died in a fire, from smoking in bed.
So yeah. I get it.