My new personal hero. Story here.
Note the fireman’s advice at the end: “Gantt advised against using a blow torch to rid a home of cobwebs.” You think?
If he’s insured, I’ll bet the company’s looking forward to seeing that claim.
Isn’t there a short story where Sherlock Holmes catches a young arsonist out re: cobwebs?
He said something to the effect that he’d accidentally touched a candle to a spiderweb, whereas it turns out they’re not actually flammable at all…
Not that house eves + fire is any good either.
Not in any of the stories by A. Conan Doyle, at least. I’ve never read anything like that, but I have read the entire Sherlock Holmes canon more times than is probably healthy. 
There are tons of “unofficial” stories starring Holmes, though, so it could very well be from one of those.
Anyway, I’m curious now. I’m going to go grab a lighter and find some cobwebs. If I’m not back in an hour assume that I burned my house down. 
Looks like it’s toast.
Can i just say, as a bit of a hijack, that i hate these regional newspapers whose websites don’t give you any fucking idea where they are.
The website of that paper is times-herald.com, but the masthead on the website doesn’t say what town the Times-Herald serves. On the rest of the page, there is nothing but some vague clues that only people familiar with the area are likely to know.
For example, the OP’s story is about a “single-story home in Sargent.” Where the fuck is Sargent? I assume, given the presence in the story of the Coweta Fire Investigator, that Sargent is somewhere near Coweta. But i still don’t know where the fuck that is. Georgia? Florida? Arizona? Texas? Oregon? Minnesota?
Looking for further clues, i see that Newnan and East Coweta are playing each other in football this week. Well, why didn’t you say so? I mean, everyone knows about the huge Newnan-East Coweta rivalry, right? It’s second only to the West Toejam-Gringleback contest in sheer animal ferocity. :rolleyes:
Well, what do you know? I go to the “About Us” page, and my first guess was actually correct. It’s in Georgia.
You’d think that, in the internet age, the proprieters of these papers would realize that there might be non-locals reading their paper’s website.
I saw a convenience store clerk torching clouds of mosquitoes with some kind of blowtorch this summer. Granted he was doing it outside the store, but he was spraying flames all over the building and windows. Only guy I ever saw do it that way. I think he was on to something…
Or you could spend 10 seconds on Google and discover that Sargent is in Coweta County, Georgia. The Times-Herald is published in Newnan.
Oh, sorry, I got sidetracked. Nope, no conflagration disasters here! 
I did, however, discover that cobwebs burn very quickly. I’m not sure if it’s the webs themselves, or all the accumulated dust that’s going up in flames, but either way they’re very quick to take light. The smoke smells awful, though.
You’re back. I was thinking you might need to change your username to Baked Potato.