Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017 | 8:21 a.m.
A man cooking marijuana-infused butter with his father at an apartment near Lake Mead and Jones boulevards Wednesday night suffered burns in an explosion, according to Las Vegas Fire & Rescue officials.
Crews were dispatched about 8:50 p.m. to what they initially thought was a grease fire in a second-story apartment in the 2100 block of Jones, officials said.
When firefighters arrived, the blaze was out, and they found a man with burns on his arm, officials said. He was taken to University Medical Center.
Firefighters followed burn spots on the ground to the parking lot, where they found a cylindrical object later determined to be a tool to cook “weed butter,” officials said.
The process, according to officials, requires cooking marijuana to extract the plant’s THC. The material is sometimes mixed with butter, which is then used in edible products.
“What makes it dangerous is the cooking process,” a fire department news release said. “There are different methods of cooking, but the use of butane to make it faster is being used and the when precautions are not taken, the butane explodes. This is what is what fire investigators believe happened in the kitchen.”
Officials determined the burn victim, who was expected to be hospitalized for at least a week, was learning from his father how to cook the weed butter, officials said.
Metro Police narcotics detectives were also investigating the incident, officials said.
