Girl Mysteriously Catches Fire in Oregon Hospital Room

It's a horrifying story that no parent would ever want to experience. An 11-year-old girl, who was hospitalized after receiving a head injury, mysteriously caught fire in a hospital room.

The girl, Ireland Lane, was a cancer survivor who was due to leave the hospital the day of the fire. Now, she's being treated for third-degree burns.

"I've been in medicine going back 30 years now and never heard anything like this. And hopefully I never will again," said Stacy Nicholson, assistant chief at Doernbecher Children's Hospital in an interview with KATU.

Right before the fire, Lane apparently used hand sanitizer to clean a table that rolled over her bed. She had been painting a wooden box as a gift for her nurses at the time. As she cleaned the table, though, her shirt suddenly caught fire. She screamed and woke her father, who was sleeping in the room, and then ran out into the hallway. Her father pursued her and attempted to smother the flames with his body. Hospital staff helped extinguish the flames.

Currently, hospital staff are unsure exactly what exactly caused the fire. However, officials are investigating whether the alcohol-based sanitizer that Lane was using may have combined with static electricity to start the fire.

This isn't the first incident which may have involved hand sanitizer. According to the Oregonian, in 2002 doctors in Kentucky reported that a nurse's hand antiseptic caught on fire from a spark of static electricity. In addition, in a 1998 Arizona case, a patient suffered serious injuries in an operating room fire which involved an alcohol-based antiseptic.

Now, Lane is in serious condition and is undergoing treatment for her third-degree burns on her chest, neck, arms and earlobes at Legacy Oregon Burn Center. She is scheduled to undergo a second skin graft for the burns on Thursday, which is her 12^th birthday.