A burn victim has become a volunteer firefighter years after a blaze left him with burns to 73 percent of his skin. Despite his injuries, Terry McCarty has lived a full life and wants to help others.
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At just 6 years old, McCarty went ablaze. His two older brothers tried to light a bowl of kerosene on fire. When it caught flames, one of them kicked it, and accidentally knocked it onto McCarty.
“It wrapped around me like a wet blanket with all the flaming kerosene,” McCarty said. “I thought everything around me was on fire. I didn’t realize I was the one on fire. So it took a few seconds for the fire to actually burn through the kerosene layer and then get to my skin … That’s when the realization really kicked in that something was very wrong.”
McCarty only survived because a neighbor came to his aid with a sleeping bag and smothered out the flames. The burn victim suffered life-altering injuries at a very young age.
Burn Victim Becomes Firefighter
Speaking to People, McCarty said he realized how bad his injuries were when he saw them in his dad’s glasses.
“He couldn’t even touch me, but he was sitting right in front of me trying to just piece together what was going on,” McCarty told the outlet. “At that stage, I watched the entire portion of my face just almost slide off in front of him because I could see it in his glasses.”
Fast forward to his 20s, and McCarty decided to become a volunteer firefighter. McCarty had to face his fears.
“Before academy, I wasn’t really afraid of fire and I didn’t have any qualms with it. I didn’t hide from it and I wasn’t scared of it,” he shares. “But there was one moment … I saw the fire come out of the ceiling and I saw it rolling towards me, and I had just a very split second where I froze. Because it kind of was the same exact visual of when the kerosene was coming at me.”
“But as soon as the fire got to me where I was at, and it went over me, it’s like it took that fear away from me when it went by me,” McCarty continues. “I realized that I was in my bunker gear and that I had the tools to do what I needed to do and I didn’t have to be afraid of it … I feel like that fire literally just cleansed and removed any issues that I had moving forward.”