Photo: kzenon (Getty)
Going out in a blaze of glory.
A funeral home called Hillside Chapel Crematory in Cincinnati, Ohio recently caught fire during a “freak accident.” Well, it was all due to a cremation of a body that funeral home owner Don Catchen called “overly obese.” And he was being polite.
“My operator was in the process of cremating remains and (the body) was overly obese and apparently it got a little hotter than the unit is supposed to get,” Catchen said. “One of the cremation containers that we had close got caught on fire and that’s what burnt.”
And Fire Chief Michael Washington even explained why that heavy fellow started a fire.
“When fat in the body burned at a higher temperature than usual, the too-hot flames spread to nearby containers and parts of the surrounding room, Washington said. “We believe there were some combustible storage boxes that were too close to the ovens.”
No one was hurt, and there wasn’t any serious damage, but it took firefighters about two hours to douse the flames.
Caleb Wilde, a licensed professional who runs the blog Confessions of a Funeral Director. had this to say:
“As you may realize, when a morbidly obese person is cremated, there’s a danger of what can only be called (in layman’s terms) a ‘grease fire.'”
Grease? Damn, Wilde, that’s just savage. And I think it’s only right we end with this:
Via WCPO
