A care­less mo­ment with a lit cig­a­rette has been blamed for an ear­ly morn­ing fire that de­stroyed a wood­en home in Debe on Sun­day.

Po­lice said the 49-year-old man was at his Chester Street house around 2.15 am when he lit a cig­a­rette in an up­stairs bed­room, leav­ing an­oth­er cig­a­rette and a lighter on a couch be­fore step­ping out­side.

When he re­turned mo­ments lat­er, the couch was al­ready ablaze. A re­port in­di­cat­ed that the man raised an alarm and fled as flames rapid­ly spread through the 20x20 two-storey wood­en struc­ture, en­gulf­ing the house with­in min­utes.

Fire of­fi­cers from the Mon Re­pos and Pe­nal fire sta­tions re­spond­ed and man­aged to ex­tin­guish the blaze, but not be­fore the house was com­plete­ly de­stroyed.

A near­by shed hous­ing two ve­hi­cles, a Mit­subishi Libero wag­on and a Mit­subishi Lancer, al­so sus­tained mi­nor dam­age due to the heat.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said that the prop­er­ty, val­ued at $60,000, was unin­sured and not con­nect­ed to elec­tric­i­ty, al­though it had a wa­ter sup­ply.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors not­ed that an ad­join­ing struc­ture was spared dam­age.

Of­fi­cers from the San Fer­nan­do CID and fire pre­ven­tion of­fi­cers, along with crime scene in­ves­ti­ga­tors, processed the scene and are con­tin­u­ing en­quiries.