Burn Severity

Published on: April 17, 2012

Mayor of Newark, NJ Saves Neighbor From Severe Burns and Smoke Inhalation in House Fire

On April 12, Newark Mayor Cory Booker saved a neighbor from a blazing house fire — a dramatic rescue that he admitted was absolutely terrifying.

The dramatic rescue began at around 9:30 p.m. that night, when Booker and two officers from the Mayor’s security team spotted a fire at a house on Hawthorne Avenue belonging to Booker’s neighbor. They went over to investigate.

On the first floor, they found a couple, who told them that the woman’s daughter and a man were trapped upstairs. Booker and Newark Detective Alex Rodriguez then went to the top of the stairs, where the home’s kitchen had erupted in flames.

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Published on: April 5, 2012

Severe Burn Victim’s Survivor Story Inspires Others

By Larry Kramer

Zane Wetzel spent 47 days in a coma, and awoke to the realization that he was involved in a life-changing accident. But with the love of his wife and unwavering faith and optimism, he and his wife have gotten to a place where they can actually help other burn victims too.

It has been a little more than two years since the 27-year-old apprentice lineman for Maine Public Service Co. in Presque Isle, Maine suffered a flash burn to 50 percent of his body while working at an electrical substation. His chest, back, arm and neck suffered third degree burns in the accident.

Wetzel was standing on a scissor lift with several other co-workers when a charge of electricity arced and touched the corner of the lift. The electricity traveled to the ground and bounced back, burning him. Safety equipment prevented Wetzel from being fatally electrocuted. And no one else around him was injured.

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Published on: April 3, 2012

Two Car Models Investigated for Possibility of Fire That Can Cause Severe Burns to Driver and Passengers

By Larry Kramer

On April 1, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced an investigation into the cause of fires in the Chevrolet Cruze, General Motors’ best-selling passenger car. According to complaints made to NHTSA, there have been at least two incidents in which the small sedan has caught fire while in motion. What’s more, General Motors confirmed that it is researching warranty claims involving fires for at least 19 Cruzes. NHTSA is also investigating incidents of fire in the Jeep Wrangler sport-utility vehicle.

In one incident, a driver said that his 2011 Cruze Eco – a model with a special factory-installed set of options that increases the sedan’s fuel economy – caught fire when the car had about 11,000 miles on the odometer.

The driver first complained of a slight smoke smell whenever he brought the vehicle to a stop. In one instance, flames appeared out of the hood and the car was completely engulfed with fire within five minutes. The owners said that a warning light appeared on the dashboard only after the first flames appeared.

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Published on: March 30, 2012

New Skin Grows Over Third Degree Burn Injuries, Thanks to Hydrogel

By Larry Kramer

A recent article from the Institute for NanoBioTechnology discussed the developments that Johns Hopkins researchers have made in creating a jelly-like material for burn wound treatment which, in early experiments on skin damaged by severe burns, seemed to regenerate healthy tissue with no sign of the previous burn scars.

In a mid-December report from the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers reported their promising results from tests using mouse tissue. The new treatment has not yet been tested on human patients, but the researchers say that the procedure, which promotes the formation of new blood vessels and skin, could lead to greatly improved healing for victims of third degree burns.

The treatment involved a simple wound dressing that included a specially designed hydrogel: a water-based, three-dimensional framework of polymers. This material was developed by researchers at Johns Hopkins’ Whiting School of Engineering, working with clinicians at the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center Burn Center and the School of Medicine’s Department of Pathology.

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Published on: March 27, 2012

Workplace Accident Causes Severe Burns for Steel Plant Employee

By Larry Kramer

Earlier this year, a man in Portage, Indiana, was placed into an induced coma after an industrial accident at the steel mill where he worked left him with third degree burns over 55 percent of his body.

The accident happened one evening at the ArcelorMittal Burns Harbor plant, when a high-pressure steam hose ruptured from where it was connected to an oxygen furnace. Gabe Rocha, a salaried foreman who transferred from the firm’s Inland Steel plant to the Burns Harbor facility about six months ago, was checking pressure lines that are part of the cooling system when the hose ruptured.

At the time of the accident, workers were investigating an alert that a steam pressure line had stopped working properly. While Rocha was looking into the situation, the hose ruptured with such force that it threw him about 200 feet, dousing him with steam.

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Published on: March 24, 2012

Burn Victims Can Reduce Pain Through Virtual Reality Games

By Larry Kramer

In August 2011, Randy McAllister suffered third degree burns while trying to save equipment from a fire in wheat field. Today, he says that when he goes for his burn treatments, “it gets me to the threshold where I can’t stand it, but then I find out it can hurt even more,” says the 60-year-old farmer. During five weeks at the Oregon Burn Center at Legacy Emanuel Medical Center in Portland, Oregon, McAllister needed repeated rounds of burn wound care to remove dead tissue from his extensive burns. “It’s more painful than the fire.”

Then a nurse told him about SnowWorld, a computer game designed to help burn patients escape from agonizing pain by distracting their minds during burn treatments. During his next wound care session, McAllister wore headphones and looked through virtual reality goggles. He found himself floating through an icy canyon rendered almost three-dimensional by the wrap-around goggles. By tapping on a computer mouse, McAllister fired snowballs at animated penguins, snowmen and dolphins in the canyon to a soundtrack of upbeat music. And the virtual world made his real-world pain less overwhelming.

It’s one of the most successful examples of non-drug pain management techniques to emerge from the work of psychologists and neuroscientists. The search for non-drug options has gained urgency amid a worsening epidemic of overdoses linked to prescription opioid pain relievers such as oxycodone and hydrocodone, which killed 14,800 Americans in 2008 – more those killed from heroin and cocaine overdoses combined.

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Published on: March 20, 2012

Recall of Mini Coopers for Fire Hazard Reminds Us That Cars Can Cause Severe Burns and Smoke Inhalation Injury

By Larry Kramer

In mid-January, BMW began a recall of 89,000 Mini Coopers in the United States for the same sort of problem that led to earlier recalls of BMW and Rolls-Royce luxury cars.

The problem, in all the recalls, is that a computer circuit board controlling a turbocharger cooling system can fail. The result: an overheating and smoldering water pump and, in some cases, a fire in the engine compartment.

The turbo cooling system in the Mini Coopers operates differently from that in the BMW and Rolls-Royce cars, according to a letter BMW sent to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Nevertheless, some turbocharged Mini cars have caught fire in the same way the larger cars did.

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Published on: March 16, 2012

How Dangerous Are House Fires? Even Well-Protected Firefighters Frequently Suffer Smoke Inhalation and Severe Burn Injury

By Larry Kramer

In late February, two Prince George’s County, MD firefighters were critically injured when a wind-fueled fireball blew through a burning house. They will survive, but the two members of the Bladensburg Volunteer Fire Department will face long, painful recoveries.

Ethan Sorrell, 21, sustained respiratory burns “through his esophagus and down to his lungs,” and Kevin O’Toole, 22, suffered second and third degree burns over 40 percent of his body when a basement fire suddenly turned a small house into something resembling a blast furnace.

O’Toole underwent skin graft surgery shortly after, and will be in the burn unit at the Washington Hospital Center for six weeks. He then faces six months of rehabilitation beyond that.

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Published on: March 9, 2012

Even One Candle Can Cause Home Fires and Severe Burns

By Larry Kramer

Several weeks back, a few unattended candles sparked a fire that caused about $130,000 in damage and caused more than 40 people to be evacuated from an apartment building in Seattle, Washington.

The fire started at just before 4 a.m., according to the Seattle Fire Department. Firefighters responding to the scene had to use a ladder to rescue a woman who had already become trapped in her second floor unit. Once she was rescued, it took them another 30 minutes to knock down the fire.

The evacuated residents waited inside a city bus as the firefighters fought the blaze. By about 6 a.m., all but two of them were able to return to their homes. Those two residents, a man and a woman, were being helped by American Red Cross.

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Published on: March 7, 2012

Fire Control Panels Recalled Due to Alarm Failure, Posing a Fire and Burn Hazard

By Larry Kramer

In mid-February, the following product safety recall was voluntarily conducted by Bosch Security Systems of Fairport, NY, in cooperation with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. Consumers should stop using this product immediately unless otherwise instructed. It is illegal to attempt to resell a recalled consumer product.

The name of the Bosch product is the Fire Alarm Control Panel. The fire alarm panel is a locking red wall box with dimensions of 22.7 inches high by 14.5 inches wide by 4.3 inches deep. The status, date and time can be seen through a glass screen on the panel door. The word BOSCH is printed on the right corner of the panel and the model number FPA-1000-UL is printed on the bottom left below the glass screen. The alarm panels featured software versions 1.10, 1.11 and 1.12, which can be determined by installers. These units were designed to be used in small to medium-sized facilities, in both public and residential buildings. These were sold at authorized distributors and installers nationwide from May 2009 through October 2011. They were manufactured in China.

About 330 units are being recalled because when the “alarm verification” feature of the system is turned on, the control panel could fail to sound an alarm if a fire occurs. In addition, on systems with 50 or more reporting stations, a delay in sounding an alarm and reporting a fire might occur if the loop for the alarm system is broken.

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