Dim lightbulb

Wow, it's rare to see a story about science have so many errors:

An Australian man built up a 40,000-volt charge of static electricity in his clothes as he walked, leaving a trail of scorched carpet and molten plastic and forcing firefighters to evacuate a building.

Frank Clewer, who was wearing a woolen shirt and a synthetic nylon jacket, was oblivious to the growing electrical current that was building up as his clothes rubbed together.

When he walked into a building in the country town of Warrnambool in the southern state of Victoria Thursday, the electrical charge ignited the carpet...

...Clewer, who after leaving the building discovered he had scorched a piece of plastic on the floor of his car, returned to seek help from the firefighters.

"We tested his clothes with a static electricity field meter and measured a current of 40,000 volts, which is one step shy of spontaneous combustion, where his clothes would have self-ignited," Barton said.

"I've been firefighting for over 35 years and I've never come across anything like this," he said.

Firefighters took possession of Clewer's jacket and stored it in the courtyard of the fire station, where it continued to give off a strong electrical current... [all emphasis mine]

Ok, let's clear these up: charge is measured in coulombs, not volts. As you walk, you build electrical charge, not electrical current. Ignition is caused by electrical discharge, not electrical charge. Electrical current is measured in amperes, not volts. And unless this jacket contained a battery, it would cease to produce an electrical current (and lose its electrical charge) just as soon as it touched a grounded object.