Nurse went up in flames after ‘using petrol to burn garden waste’
An American nurse has relived an incident which left her with PTSD after being engulfed in flames while burning garden waste with petrol.
Doris Modlin was left with painful injuries to her face when she and her partner were trying to dispose of a pile of branches and leaves in July 2018.
The 32-year-old had no idea the pile of foliage had already been doused so when she lit a match, fumes in the air ignited around her.
She had to be intubated and put in an induced coma before spending months in rehab, describing herself as ‘lucky to be alive’.
Doris, who is from Tennessee, said she wanted to share her story to raise awareness about the danger of improperly handling fuel.
She recounted how the disaster occurred when she offered to help get a match lit, saying: ‘I didn’t realise at the time but he had poured gasoline on it and he had a box of standard matches.
‘So I get up there and try to light the match to throw it onto the brush pile and by the third strike the fumes blew up in my face.
‘He witnessed it and he said a huge cloud of fire just surrounded me and then it went away.
‘It was like a big freak accident. It sounded like a cannon going off when it finally ignited.
‘All I remember him telling me was “run” so I turned around and ran away from it.
‘We went inside and he said within a few minutes my lips had turned a solid, ash white and that’s when he called the ambulance.
‘I was stunned. All the adrenaline rushing through my body allowed me not to feel any pain but I did feel like my face had a very bad sunburn.’
Doris was left with first and second degree burns on her face, neck, arms, legs and feet as well as third degree burns on her lips.
She recovered with ‘minimal’ scarring from her burns and the skin procedures she needed afterwards.
But she struggled with memories of the traumatic incident and needed counselling to process the event, which left her ‘too scared to go to sleep’.
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