I just cant believe that someone could be this stupid. Hell its like checking for gas leaks with matches. The firecracker guy WTF! 
This reminds me of a story that appeared in the Chicago Sun Times many years back. A natural gas explosion caused a church to blow up during Sunday services in one of the poorer black communities on the South Side of the city. The article, along with subsequent newscasts were quite editorial about how horrible this was, and made accusations that the gas company didn't do enough to assure everything was safe in the church, etc. Even Jesse Jackson picked it up and ran with it. Luckily no one was killed, but there were a few men in the basement at the time of the explosion who were seriously burned.
Then, after the gas company started investigating, the truth came out. As it turned out these poor guys in the basement weren't so holy. They were trying to tee off and hard pipe the gas line around the meter. What they didn't know was that the meter also contained a pressure reducing regulator inside it to maintain 4 PSI out, instead of the
90 PSI in! When they disconnected the line running into the meter, they got the surprise of a lifetime! The furnace was running full bore at the time because this happened in January. Ignition source, plus gas at 90 PSI equals bangy, bangy! Jesse "refused to comment" after that, and the editorials suddenly went silent. Bill T.