SAN DIEGO - A fire, blamed on smoking marijuana in a hookah, extensively damaged a Rancho Peñasquitos home Thursday night.
The blaze erupted in the garage of the two-story house in the 8800 block of Adobe Bluffs Drive shortly after 6:30 p.m.
San Diego 6 News spoke exclusively to a 23-year-old man who described how the fire started.
"I was inside and I was lighting a torch for my hookah with a torch lighter and the lighter exploded and caught my couch on fire," he explained.
The fire department's dispatch system was experiencing some problems which delayed the firefighters arrival. In the meantime, neighbors grabbed hoses and helped as much as they could in the Torrey Highlands neighborhood.
"We had three of us working with hoses," said one neighbor. "It was just, you know, putting a little spray on the exterior, which does nothing 'cause the fire was inside."
A second neighbor added, "We made sure everybody was out of the house. I turned the gas off. We did the best we could with what he had."
Investigators say the young man was using the hookah to smoke marijuana and apparently left the torch on. San Diego Police Sgt Alan Hayward says the man went to get water from another room and returned to find the garage and its contents ablaze, including his Jeep, which he tried to push out of the garage.
Firefighters say they found several pipes in the garage.
