"At five o’ clock [in the morning], I heard a noise like metal had fallen. I thought it was my housekeeper coming in and she had dropped her keys on the tiles, that’s what it sounded like, so I didn’t pay any attention. A few minutes later, my eyes are stinging and my throat’s closing up, [I thought], ‘Something’s weird smelling in here.’ Then my dog started to bark. I go downstairs and the whole living room [was on fire]. The candle had burst and the cracking sound was the glass and the candle exploding…
"My husband had an operation on his hand yesterday so he’s in a complete cast… He comes down and goes, ‘Oh, the fire, the fire!’ [and tries to put it out[ with his hand in the cast. Then he opens the French doors and I go into the kitchen and throw water on it and it erupted…
“Ozzy’s front of his hair from (his ear down is), gone! His eyebrows (are gone)… he’s got like, skinned cheeks. We are, like, two idiots, it was like The Three Stooges… Everything you are not meant to do — go to bed with candles alight, open the doors and put water on — we did it all.”
She continued: "[The firemen] come up, they give us a lecture, and Ozzy’s like, ‘She’s been doing this to me for 32 years! You tell her, you tell her, no more candles!’
"I
apologize to my husband because he put himself out. He made his hand
worse, it started to bleed, the whole nine yards, and I’m sorry and I
love you and I will never light a candle again…