Man blows up his apartment trying to kill cockroach with insecticide

A Japanese man trying to kill a single cockroach inadvertently turned into a firebug when he blew up his own apartment, officials said.

The epic pest control fail was reported early Sunday in the city of Kumamoto on the island of Kyushu, about 230 miles southwest of Hiroshima.

Sometime before midnight, a 54-year-old man spotted a solitary cockroach inside his apartment in the city’s Chuo Ward and sprayed a massive amount of insecticide to wipe out the critter, reported the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper, citing the Kumamoto Prefectural Police.

A minute later, an explosion went off, blowing out a balcony window.

The unfortunate resident suffered a minor injury in the blast, police said.

An investigation into the fiery incident has uncovered burn marks near the victim’s kotatsu – a Japanese heating table.

The National Consumer Affairs Center of Japan said it has received multiple reports of explosions that have been linked to insecticide being sprayed near electrical outlets.

This is not the first time that a disaster has struck when someone tried to exterminate bugs using non-traditional methods.

In December 2017, a woman in Cincinnati, Ohio, burned her house to the ground after using rubbing alcohol near an open flame to get rid of bedbugs.

Just a few weeks earlier, a 13-year-old boy also living in Cincinnati was left homeless after deploying the same dangerous combination of fire and alcohol to eradicate a bedbug infestation.