He was trying to kill bedbugs. It caused $300,000 in fire damage, firefighters say

Anyone who’s battled bedbugs knows it’s a difficult, painful and frustrating fight.

But when an Ohio 13-year-old took extreme measures to take on his unwelcome bedbug guests on Tuesday, he accidentally lit a fire that caused $300,000 in damage and left eight residents at his apartment building without a home, according to the Associated Press.

The blaze began when the boy sprinkled some alcohol on a bedbug and struck a match, fire officials told AP. The match inadvertently lit the boy’s mattress on fire, officials said, setting off a fire that ultimately damaged six units in the apartment building.

“This was accidental. He wasn’t in there just playing with matches,” Fire Chief Marc Monahan told Fox 19. “It wasn’t the smartest thing, obviously, but he was trying to get rid of a bedbug.”

The fire was reported at 11 p.m. on Nov. 28, Fox 19 reports. No one was injured in the blaze, according to WLWT.

One of the units was destroyed by the fire, while two others were damaged badly, WCPO reports. Another two units sustained smoke and water damage, firefighters told the TV station.

One resident was gone when the fire started, but saw flames bursting out the windows when she got home.

“My house is gone,” Janay Martin told WCPO. “Thank God me and my kids weren’t at home, that would’ve been an ugly situation if we were.”

There was a vacant unit in the building at the time of the blaze, and residents were gone from two of the units when it happened, firefighters told WCPO.

“My kids’ bedrooms are burnt to shambles, the bathrooms, everything is gone,” Martin told the TV station. “My Christmas tree was still standing, but everything else is gone.”

Another resident said that she narrowly made it out of the building with her family.

“The lady who stays next door said there’s a fire. You all need to get out of there,” Corine DeJanette, who lives next to the third floor apartment where the fire started, told WLWT.

DeJanette had just tucked her kids in for bed at the time, she told the TV station.

“I had to hurry up and come up the steps to get my babies,” DeJanette told WLWT. “If we didn’t hear them knocking or I didn’t answer the door, we wouldn’t be here today, and that’s scary.”

This story was originally published November 30, 2017 at 2:56 PM with the headline "He was trying to kill bedbugs. It caused $300,000 in fire damage, firefighters say."