Man rubs building wrong way

Static charge from clothing ignites carpet

SYDNEY •

An Australian man built up a 40,000-volt charge of static electricity in his clothes as he walked, leaving a trail of scorched carpet and molten plastic, and forcing firefighters to evacuate a building.

Frank Clewer, who was wearing a woollen shirt and a synthetic nylon jacket, was oblivious to the growing electrical current that was building up as his clothes rubbed together.

When he walked into a building in the town of Warrnambool in the southern state of Victoria on Thursday, the charge ignited the carpet.

“It sounded almost like a firecracker,” Mr. Clewer said yesterday. “ Within about five minutes, the carpet started to erupt.”

Employees called firefighters, who evacuated the building.

Mr. Clewer, who after leaving the building discovered he had scorched a piece of plastic on the floor of his car, 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, where his clothes would have self-ignited,” fire official Henry Barton said.

David Gosden, a senior lecturer in electrical engineering at Sydney University, said 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 explained.