He said they had been using a blowtorch to heat asphalt singles to apply to the roof early on Sunday.
My brain can confirm that this is the correct explanation because I had already heard on radio news and TV news that a blow torch was involved, but a question mark still hovered overhead about how exactly that blow torch was being utilized. My basic logic would determine that a typo in a bbc news release meant to read that roofers were installing shingles. But this is Hollywood we're talking about and I can't run it past them that some movie director using single people as extras needed to warm them up and place them on tops of roofs (like my idea for a screenplay about graffiti artists painting the numerical address on miscellaneous rooftops for google map purposes).
Well, if my acute sense of paranoia still exists—and I've been single all my life—then what are the chances men in dark suits wearing dark glasses are going to be knocking on my door to take me away? Far away and never to be heard from again? Hmn?
Okay, if singles were being applied to the roof, then that means there must be a typo in the word asphalt and what the reported of this story intended to write was "singles are at fault".