In a town called Granby in upstate New York, a man was seriously burned last week when he simply placed meat carelessly into a hot pan.
Granby Center Fire Chief Donald LaBarge said the man was cooking inside his mobile home when he tossed more meat into the pan. Flames from splattering grease came back at him, causing second- and third-degree burns to the man’s face, hands, arms and back.
The man was taken to a Syracuse hospital by ambulance. Damage to the mobile home was limited to the area around the stove, so it was not even a true fire. Instead, if the man was simply more careful about placing his food into a hot pan, this incident would not have happened.
In another instance where someone did not respect the danger of flammable materials, a college football player has had to make a long and difficult recovery last a year, all because he acted carelessly around a bonfire.
Since it was a friend’s birthday and one of his roommates had a cabin not far from their college, Jim Geissler and his friends chose to have a party and bonfire there. It was the weekend before Thanksgiving and Geissler and his friends were ready to relax after a grueling four-month football season.
But Geissler’s future flashed before his eyes in a blaze of fire. Later that night, a person at the party started to throw gas from a plastic can on the bonfire. That person later left that can too close to the fire. Geissler noticed the can by the fire and several people in the area that were a little too close to it as well. So he went over to kick the can to get it out of the way. That decision changed everything.
“The guy who left the can wasn’t being smart, because there were about 20 people around the fire,” Geissler said. “He had dropped the can by the fire. So I kicked it, but it exploded. My legs caught on fire. I had never felt pain like that before. It was like sticking your hand on a stove and you can’t take it off. I remember there being a really big flame. It singed my hair and eyebrows. I just rolled around and tried throwing dirt on myself. It happened so fast.”
After a year, Geissler’s third-degree burns were mostly healed, but the injury simply did not have to happen. So keep these two stories in mind whenever you deal with cooking, fires, and other hot items. It’s just too easy to get get badly burned.