'General Hospital' Star Kelly Monaco's Home Burned in Fire Caused by Cigarette

Kelly Monaco, star of General Hospital, has escaped a massive house fire. Her Sherman Oaks home went up ablaze on Friday, May, 13. The cause of the fire was a cigarette being ignited. Monaco told TMZ that she woke up late the day of the fire to flames raging in her front yard, with flames going up to her windows. The flames eventually engulfed full portions of the house. Monaco made it out unscathed, but not the house. According to Monaco, the blaze caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages and she won't be able to live in the home for quite some time.

Monaco turned her security footage over to law enforcement to aid in the investigation. As it turns out, arson investigators were able to determine the fire was started by someone tossing a lit cigarette butt on the empty lot next to her home. But investigators do not believe the fire was started intentionally.

Monaco has starred in soap operas for 22 years and counting. According to her, she's living out a scene from a bad soap in real life. "Something as little as a cigarette butt can cause casualties and devastation," she told the outlets. 

Outside of her work on soap operas, Monaco is the Season 1 winner of Dancing With the Stars. She also starred on the E! reality television series Dirty Soap, which premiered in 2011. The hour-long series chronicled on the personal and professional lives of daytime soap opera stars and their off-screen time and was produced by Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos. At the time of the reality series, Monaco had recently ended an 18-year relationship and was eager to get back into the dating scene.

Monaco returned to Dancing With the Stars twice, once in 2015 alongside partner Val Chmerkovskiy for the All-Stars season in which she placed third. She came back again for Season 25 in week 8 to dance alongside Terrell Owens and Cheryl Burke in the rumba.