A care­less mo­ment with a lit cig­a­rette has been blamed for an ear­ly morn­ing fire that de­stroyed a wood­en home in Debe on Sun­day.

Po­lice said the 49-year-old man was at his Chester Street house around 2.15 am when he lit a cig­a­rette in an up­stairs bed­room, leav­ing an­oth­er cig­a­rette and a lighter on a couch be­fore step­ping out­side.

When he re­turned mo­ments lat­er, the couch was al­ready ablaze. A re­port in­di­cat­ed that the man raised an alarm and fled as flames rapid­ly spread through the 20x20 two-storey wood­en struc­ture, en­gulf­ing the house with­in min­utes.