Man, woman seriously burned in fire

A man and woman were seriously burned Monday morning when the woman's cigarette sparked a fire with her oxygen tank, a spokesman for the Clark County Fire Department said.

The woman suffered burns to her face and the man suffered significant burns over a large part of his body in the blaze, which started about 6 a.m. in a house on the east side of the valley, Fire Department spokesman Scott Allison said. Both were taken to University Medical Center.

Flames were shooting from the front door and window when firefighters pulled up to the house on the 3100 block of Palmdale Street, near Lamb Boulevard and Desert Inn Road. The house was filled with furniture and other belongings that fueled the flames, Allison said.

Investigators believe the man, whose clothes melted to his body, was in another part of the house when the fire started and was burned either trying to put out the fire or was burned by a fireball from an exploding oxygen tank, Allison said.

He went to a neighbor's house to get help.

The neighbor has "known him for years, and he said the guy was so badly burned he didn't recognize him," Allison said.

Investigators weren't sure how the woman got out of the house. She told firefighters she was smoking while taking oxygen when the fire started, he said.

The fire was the third in two weeks involving cigarettes and oxygen tanks.

In one of those cases, a man died Friday morning after his apartment on Charleston Boulevard near Interstate 15 was gutted by a fire.

Firefighters put out heavy flames before finding the man's charred body in the bed of his studio apartment. The remains of an exploded oxygen tank were found on the bed, and nearby residents told investigators that the man had a history of smoking while using his oxygen, a fire official said.

On Thanksgiving, firefighters responded to a fire caused by a person smoking near an oxygen tank on the city's east side.

No one was seriously injured in that incident.