Rachel Kerr, 52, feels lucky to be alive after her online purchase blew up in her face (Picture: Kennedy News & Media)
A mum-of-two was left with skin falling from her face after a portable fireplace bought on Amazon engulfed her in flames.
It wasn’t the first time beauty educator Rachel Kerr, 52, had used the ethanol fireplace since she bought the so-called ‘s’mores maker’ three years ago.
But it was July 4 – Independence Day – and no one had work the next morning, so she decided to stay out longer with her 14-year-old son and her partner Mike Stone.
That’s when it ‘lit her up like a firework’, just as Mike, 47, went to refill the tabletop contraption with an alcohol accelerant they thought had burnt out.
‘It literally just exploded’, Rachel, rom Lynnwood, Washington, said. ‘It was like a wave of flames that just flew at me. It was a jet stream of wind, that was like how the flames shot at me.
‘As the heat started coming towards my face, I had just enough time to turn my head away from the flame.
‘I mean I still had my eyebrows and eyelashes and everything [burnt] off. I put one of my hands up and it got one of my hands really bad.
‘It was a rush of flames. All of a sudden I kept seeing flames and I couldn’t quite understand what was happening.
Mike saved Rachel with buckets of water dumped on her head (Picture: Kennedy News and Media)
Even after three weeks, Rachel’s burns are still raw (Picture: Kennedy News and Media)
‘Then I realised my hair was on fire. In that moment, all I really felt was heat. I was in disbelief and just sheer terror.’
Rolling on the floor and patting the flames didn’t extinguish them, so Mike followed the advice of 911 to dump pitchers of water on Rachel’s head.
It was only then, once the fire was out and she was smouldering, that Rachel really started to feel the pain, which she described as worse than childbirth.
Photos show the result of the second degree burns across her face, neck, chest and one of her hands, where skin was falling away to reveal the red, raw flesh beneath.
When paramedics arrived, they cut off her shirt and jewellery before taking her to A&E so they could remove dead tissue from her wounds in a process called debriding.
‘They basically were scraping all of my burned areas. It was just insane’, Rachel said.
‘It was just insane. Even with as much pain meds as I had in me, I was thinking in my brain I would rather have three more children with no meds than go through what I was going through.’
Bathing has been a challenged as Rachel continues her recovery from the burns (Picture: Kennedy News and Media)
Rachel fears the outcome could have been fatal had she been sat any closer to the fireplace (Picture: Kennedy News and Media)
Recovering from burns across 7% of her body has been excruciating as Rachel undergoes ‘skin-crawling’ dressing changes and the emotional pain of looking in the mirror with her hair cut off.
Rachel said: ‘The first week I couldn’t shower by myself, my partner Mike was changing my dressings for me and feeding me.
‘For someone like me, it was just life-changing because I’m extremely independent.
‘The pain was so intense. When he was dressing my wounds, it made my skin crawl how painful it was and this is with medication from the hospital.
‘The nerve pain in my neck, every once in a while my neck will seize up on me as they’re repairing themselves. It stops me in my tracks as it’s extremely painful.
‘I lost all my hair so I had to cut all my hair off and so it’s a struggle looking in the mirror sometimes in the morning, so you have that emotional pain as well.’
Feeling lucky to be alive, Rachel is keen to warn others about the risks of using seemingly ‘easy and convenient’ tabletop ethanol fireplaces.
She said: ‘Luckily, I was sitting probably three feet away from it. I think that if I would have been sitting any closer, it would be a completely different story.
‘Sitting six inches closer, I don’t know that I’d be here today honestly. The pictures we got from the very next day, I’m extremely lucky to be alive.
‘I don’t know if it could have happened any time in the three years prior, we have zero idea what was different this time.
‘Just be careful or don’t use them. We’ve done research on this and it’s not something that is uncommon. I’ve had people reach out who have had similar stories.
‘I think these new little contraptions make it seem very convenient and very easy, but they’re very dangerous.’
Amazon have been contacted for comment.
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