Surely he should have foreseen this?
From the Times, London (
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1731541,00.html):
August 12, 2005
Psychic's crystal ball burns down his flat in unforeseen blaze
By Alan Hamilton
IF HERVE VANDROT, a French amateur psychic, took out a warranty on his crystal ball, he may soon be claiming on it. Instead of predicting that his flat would catch fire, the fortune-telling device was the cause of the blaze.
M Vandrot, 24, who is studying botanics at Edinburgh University, left the ball on his windowsill while he visited the citys Royal Botanic Garden. By the time he returned, the ball had destroyed his own and two other flats, and had left several others uninhabitable.
The student, who uses the ball for psychic purposes, suffered blistering to his hand when he burst into his burning top-floor flat in the citys Marchmont area in an effort to rescue his university course work. He was removed from the building by some of the 35 firefighters who had arrived to tackle the unforeseen inferno.
Marchmonts streets of elegant Victorian tenements are popular with students. M Vandrot had moved in only two weeks ago.
M Vandrot, released from hospital after a night having his hand treated, denied that his crystal ball had been the cause of the blaze. I dont think it is capable of doing that. I think it was an electrical fault; the plug of my computer was melted.
Edinburghs firefighters disagreed, and roundly blamed the ball. Strong sunlight through glass, particularly if the glass is filled with liquid like a goldfish bowl, concentrates the suns rays and acts like a magnifying glass, a spokesman said. The fire had been started by the ball concentrating a ray of sunshine on a pile of washing, he said.
One of M Vandrots friends, who was helping him to sift through the debris yesterday, said: I dont think it was the crystal ball. I have had crystal balls on my windowsills for years and nothing happened.
One neighbour said: I think he and his friends are all into fortune-telling and crystal-healing stuff. But I didnt realise the crystals could have that effect. It was a terrible night for us.
