A crematorium went up in flames when the excessive fat from an “overly obese” body caused the pyre to burn too brightly, according to local reports.
The owner of the Hillside Chapel Crematory in Cincinnati says the conflagration started on Tuesday night when the fire engulfing the corpulent corpse got too hot and spread to some nearby containers.
“My operator was in the process of cremating remains and (the body) was overly obese and apparently it got a little hotter than the unit is supposed to get,” owner Don Catchen told WCPO Cincinnati.
“One of the cremation containers that we had close got caught on fire and that’s what burnt.”
Firefighters battled the blaze for two hours and managed to save the building from any serious damage, Catchen told the TV station.
Crematoriums are fairly fire-resistant by design.
“The containers that we use — that we have to place the remains in to cremate them — that’s the only thing that’s burnt,” he said.
This isn’t the first time a dead body’s extra weight has caused a fire.
A crematorium in Austria was gutted in 2012 when a 440-pound woman’s body blocked an air filter.