© KATU/ABC NewsIreland Lane, an 11-year-old cancer survivor, caught fire at an Oregon hospital.
An 11-year-old cancer survivor who was hospitalized with a head injury is now recovering from third-degree burns after her shirt mysteriously caught fire in a Portland, Ore., hospital room.
The girl, Ireland Lane, had been painting in her room at Doernbecher Children's Hospital,
ABC affiliate KATU reported. Moments later, she ran into the hallway screaming, with her T-shirt aflame.
"I've been in medicine going back 30 years now and never heard anything like this. And hopefully I never will again," Dr. Stacy Nicholson, physician-in-chief at Doernbecher Children's Hospital, told KATU.
"Our safety experts are working closely with the Oregon State Fire Marshal's office on its investigation," Nicholson added in a statement to ABCNews.com. "We anxiously await the their findings and will certainly make adjustments if the cause was preventable."
Hospital staff extinguished the flames, but the cause of the fire remains a mystery. Ireland said she used hand sanitizer to clean a table that rolled over her bed, where she had painted a wooden box as a gift for her nurses,
the Oregonian reported. Officials are investigating whether the alcohol-based sanitizer and static electricity could have sparked the fire, a spokesman for the Oregon State Fire Marshal told ABCNews.com.