Phosphorus found coating the beach rocks that set a woman’s pants on fire. Joanna Schroeder tries not to make jokes because the situation is serious.
No, this isn’t a joke about the power of lady-parts.
A couple who had earlier been collecting rocks along the beach in San Onofre, California were both severely burned when—out of nowhere—the woman’s pants set on fire. She tried to stop, drop, and roll, as all of us who’ve ever been in third grade know to do when our clothing is on fire, but the burning only got worse. Her husband—good husband of the year—repeatedly tried to pat the fire out with his hands, but instead of calming the flames, the heat only got worse. Finally he tore her shorts off (I blushed when I heard this portion of the story on the Today Show) and when paramedics arrived, he was hosing her off, trying to cool the burns.
At first it seemed like the rocks must have arrived from a planet I hope to never visit. But it turns out that the rocks contained phosphorus, or perhaps were coated with the element. And apparently (science people, help me out) when phosphorus is exposed to air, it burns.
Now, I do sorta remember this from my stint pretending to like science in college… And what I remember is that phosphorus was used as an incendiary weapon in Vietnam, where it was called Willie Pete. It is awfully hard for me to think that these rocks that set this lady’s pants on fire and burned her husband’s hands are somehow unrelated to nearby Marine base Camp Pendleton. Fortunately, Captain Barry Edwards says that there is apparently no link to any training materials used at the base, but Camp Pendleton will participate and help in any investigation.
Who do you think is to blame in the case of the flaming cargo shorts? Camp Pendleton? Aliens? Bad luck?
Photo courtesy of AP/Orange Country Health Care Agency
Clearly she must have been lying about something… at least if schoolyard rhymes have taught me anything. 8^)
Hahaha. I had nearly this exact same jokes among the 8 jokes I removed from the original article.
Just a possibility for another factor in the mix is the spreading radiation from Fukushima.
http://www.google.com.au/search?q=fukushima+pacific+california&btnG=&hl=en&client=safari&gl=au&biw=320&bih=416&tbm=isch&sa=2#i=47
What do you think of Ure’s idea, Cornelius?
I don’t get anything clicking that link, other than the Google Australia home page, so I’m not sure what argument is being made there. From the story, the rocks did test positive for phosphorous, so we know that’s the likely culprit. We don’t know how the phosphorous got there nor why it took so long to ignite. It could have been in a stable compound that underwent a reaction when coming into contact either with one of the other rocks that were collected, or with something in her pockets. I can’t imagine what connection is trying to be drawn between… Read more »
Nick, thanks for the knowledge you have shared. To be clear I was not making an argument, just positing a factor that I wondered about as a possible influence. The link was just to one of the images of the spreading raditation across the Pacific I am not a scientist but have worked around science from 15 years and learned enough to know that at any point in time humanity always has an incomplete picture of what is actually going on and tries to make sense of reality with our best guesses as to theories which are almost universally incomplete… Read more »
Phosphorus, if I remember correctly, is one of the most volatile and unstable elements. It reacts when exposed to air. So Nick, mostly is correct – if the rocks were wet when collected, then once they dried, they reacted to the air and ignited.
If the rocks were wet when they collected them, it’s quite plausible they began to ignite once they had dried off a bit.
But seriously, I would have started with the tearing off of shorts. Given the choice between second degree burns and a bit of embarrassment, I’d take the latter any day and hope my partner would choose the same for me.
Here’s the thing… In a moment like that, where there’s fire, you don’t think “The fire must be coming from inside her pocket” you think — because everything in your life up to that point would have supported it — that the fire must have landed on her and started on top of the shorts. So patting them out makes sense.
But now it seems like anything’s possible!! The world is crazy! Rocks set themselves on fire in someone’s shorts!
Maybe that’s just the chemistry teacher in me exposing my bias – everything in my life up to that point would have told me, “what’s on those rocks? Magnesium? Phosphorous? Sodium?”