He's smokin' !!

"A man who unknowingly built up a 40,000-volt charge of static electricity in his clothes as he walked left a trail of scorched carpet and molten plastic in his wake and forced firefighters to evacuate a building. Frank Clewer, who was wearing a woollen shirt and a synthetic jacket, ignited the carpet when he walked into a building in the Victorian country town of Warrnambool on Thursday.

"It sounded almost like a firecracker," Mr Clewer said. "Within about five minutes the carpet started to erupt." Employees smelt something burning and phoned firefighters, who evacuated the building.

"There were several scorch marks in the carpet, and we could hear a cracking noise - a bit like a whip - both inside and outside the building," said Henry Barton, a fire brigade official. Firefighters cut electricity to the building, suspecting there had been a power surge.

Mr Clewer, who had left the building, discovered he had scorched the plastic on the floor of his car. He then returned to seek help from the firefighters. "We tested his clothes with a static electricity field meter and measured a current of 40,000 volts, which is one step shy of spontaneous combustion," Mr Barton said. "I've been firefighting for over 35 years and I've never come across anything like this."

The firefighters took Mr Clewer's jacket to the fire station, where it continued to give off a strong electrical current. David Gosden, a lecturer in electrical engineering at Sydney University, said that for a static electricity charge to ignite a carpet, conditions had to be perfect. "Static electricity is a similar mechanism to lightning, where you have clouds rubbing together and then a spark generated by very dry air above them," he said. It was unusual for static electricity to reach 40,000 volts."

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/a-cracker-of-a-day--but-whats-that-smell/2005/09/16/1126750129173.html