I knew a guy who was sort of accident prone. He wanted to see how much gas he had in the tank of his motorcycle so he held a lighter to the gas tank opening to look inside...........
I kid you not, and I've told this story before...
When working at the airport, I was the line chief. I was driving into the airport one morning and I see my early shift kid driving out. He wasn't supposed to leave for a few hours.
I walk into the office and ask the secretary where "XXXX" is going? She says "Butch fired him. He checked the level of the little 100 with a lighter and it caught on fire, so he fired him."
I started laughing and said "Yeah right!"
Butch was our vehicle mechanic, and didn't have the authority to fire the kid.
The little 100 was an old early 60s Ford pickup with a 350 gallon tank on the back for 100LL avgas.
And, who'd be that stupid!?!?!?!?
I walk into the back hangar and there's Butch scrubbing ash off of the top of the tank around the fill hole on the little 100.
He said XXXX told him he checked the level of the fuel in the tank with a lighter while at the fuel farm, it lit on fire, he slammed the lid shut, and the fire went out, so he fired him.
I was shocked! I called the kid back in to ask what happened, because I just couldn't believe it.
He came back in, and told me it was in the wee hours of the morning. It was cold and dark. He was filling the tank from the overhead filler. Procedure was to stick your hand in the tank with your bare finger on the disk that was set by the weights and measurements department to verify 350 gallons. If your finger got wet, it was full, so stop. He didn't want to get his finger wet, so he held his lighter out at arms length, lit it, then slowly brought it in towards the filler lid. When it got close, WOOSH! Up it went.
Thank god he didn't have the filler running, and that the tank was full, so there wasn't much room for fumes, or he'd probably have been blown to bits, or at the least, incinerated.
I thanked him for coming back and telling me, and confirmed that he was still fired.
Yikes!