Doctors are yet to figure out what caused Ireland Lane to ignite

Feb 20, 2013 06:42 GMT  ·  By

An 11-year-old girl must now undergo treatment meant to deal with several burns on her body, not because she was injured during a fire, but because she herself burst into flames while resting in a bed at a hospital in Portland, Oregon.

Ireland Lane, as this girl is named, was admitted to Doernbecher Children's Hospital following her hitting her head during school time and losing consciousness.

Apparently, the doctors were quite successful in treating her for this head injury, and soon after Ireland Lane started feeling better, they allowed her to simply rest for a while and further recover from the incident.

While sitting in her hospital bed, the girl suddenly caught fire. Luckily for her, her father was right beside her and managed to put out the flames.

However, Ireland Lane did suffer third-degree burns over a large portion of her torso and her head, hence her having to be taken to Legacy Oregon Burn Center, Live Science reports.

By the looks of it, the medical staff in charge of looking after Ireland Lane is yet to make head and tail of this incident.

As Dr. Stacy Nicholson, a pediatrician working with Doernbecher, puts it, “I've been in medicine going back 30 years now and never heard anything like this. And hopefully I never will again.”

The same source informs us that, according to information made available to the public by fire investigators, Ireland Lane caught fire because of an alcohol-based sanitizer, which the girl used to clean her bedside table, and because of her playing with the bed sheets and trying to get them to produce sparks of static electricity.

Thus, it is quite likely that one of these sparks must be held accountable for making the alcohol-based hand sanitizer ignite.

For the time being, doctors are doing their best in treating Ireland Lane with the help of skin grafts.

However, it is to be expected that the girl will have to spend several weeks in the hospital before being allowed to return to her home.