I guess that’s what he gets for mixing fibers. Wool and nylon, indeed.
I call BS.
I didn’t realize firefighters carried along a volt meter as part of their equipment. Certainly not one that’s capable of measuring potential in the 10’s of thousands of volts.
Plus with that kind of static charge built up, the dude would have had to discharge it the second he touched a door handle. Assuming his shoes were some kind of super fantastic insulator and kept the charge from being grounded as he walked.
As for the jacket they keep stored at the firestation… I think it’ll require exorcism.
That’s really a poorl-written, and badly-researched article. It’s trivial to develop a 20,000-40,000 volt static charge. A typic static shock you get from scuffing your feet over a shag carpet in the winter easily falls within that range. Current is measured in amperes, not volts. I also find the bit about the static electicity meter to be suspicious. There is no reason for firefighters to have such a piece of equipment at hand, AFAIK. I think the story is bunk.
That’s kinda what I thought, too. But I thought I’d check in with you fine people to see if I thought wrong. I love being right! 
When I was a kid, I used to take out a book from the library on static electricity, filled with experiments. One of them was “How to build up a charge of 20,000 Volts”. You stand on an insulator, and someone rubs the appropriate fur or whatever on you. Yet get a big violtage, as you can verify with the electrometer you’ve built. You step off the insulator, and it all goes to ground. You don’t get hurt, and the carpet doesn’t scorch, because there’s practically no current.
Yeah…
Oh, come on! You can’t really expect this to sneak under the radar. Not here.
What really shocked me (groan) about this blurb was that NPR played it as their bottom-of-the-hour bit on “Morning Edition” today, with the “current of 40,000 volts” error intact.
I was going to write a letter to their editor but I figure they’ve probably already heard all of this and more by now.
Does anyone have the real scoop on this article? The article reads like it was written for the Weekly World News or some such. Did someone make this up as a hoax to see how far they could pass it off through the regular news services? Has anyone printed a retraction yet?
Feh, I say! Feh!
Even I knew current is measured in amps, and I barely scraped through 5th form physics. Someone’s been watching too many X-Men movies. And WTF is a “Static Electricity Field Meter”? A voltmeter? An ammeter? Something Batman just made?
Well, they mangled the name of the instrument, as with most of the other facts in the story, but they probably meant an electrostatic voltmeter, which is used to measure high-voltage electric charges.
I feel this story has not been trashed enough.
Okay spontaneous combustion does exist (as opposed to spontaneous human combustion). But how do they know know the appropriate voltage (???) at which it occurs?
Worse still, what do they mean by “one step shy”? A common demonstration in physics classes involves charging up a person by having him touch the dome of a Van de Graff generator, making his hair stand on end. Thse can easily charge you to a voltage of up to several hundred thousand volts with no ill effects. To my knowlege, no one participating in such a demostration has ever burst into flames. To go from 40,000 up to 100,000 or more is one big step.
That’s a “1920’s style electrostatic voltmeter”.
Well, you gotta calibrate the field coil on your death ray, don’t ya know?
That is of course dependent upon the amount of ethanol a person’s body contains. It was once calculated that Foster Brooks could spontaneously combust if he’d change the battery in a smoke detector. 
Dolts! Ignoramuses! They dared to question me! I, who had explored beyond the farthest reaches of God’s creation and unlocked the realms of the unknown. Purblind asses - who were they to tell me that there are some things man was not meant to set on fire? And so they mocked and shunned me - I was forced to resign my Chair in Tampering With The Unknown, and driven into exile. But they shall pay! Oh, yes. Soon they shall all pay! {Lightning flashes, thunder rolls} Bwahahahahooha!
There’s an Endowed Chair “For Tampering with The Unknown”? Who knew?!
Q.E.D.*
Worse still, what do they mean by “one step shy”?*
Wow, I guess that must be an industry term used by the firefighting cognoscenti.