Where an individual is subjected to a fire or an explosion, it can result in a wide range of different injuries, with burns being some of the most significant. The most common type of burns experienced are thermal burns - caused by direct contact with hot surfaces, hot liquids, and naked flames. Other common types of burns include electrical and chemical burns. In case a fire or an explosion ever happens, it is important for people to know how to act in such a situation and how to correctly treat burns, as it can potentially save lives.
Background Info
In the United States of America, a person dies as the result of a fire roughly every couple of hours and someone is injured just over every 20 minutes or so. Of these burn injuries, roughly 1 million of them result in medical attention being required. It has been shown that around 50,000 of these are that severe that they actually require the individual to go into hospital to receive their treatment. Unfortunately some 4,500 individuals die each and every year in the United States of America due to burn injuries.
Escape Plan
Only around 60% of people have some sort of escape plan in place should a fire or an explosion occur within their property. Any plan that an individual has should involve first installing a smoke detector or smoke detectors on each and every floor in the property, with one outside of the master bedroom. In order to ensure that they are fully working, it is important to change the battery on these smoke detectors on an annual basis.
You should keep important information, such as emergency contact details close to hand and create a floor plan of each and every room, identifying at least two exits from each. This information should be disseminated amongst everyone who resides within the property.
First Aid
By treating a burn injury as soon as possible, you are doing everything that you can to minimize the impact that it has either on yourself or the victim.
When on fire, an individual should immediately stop whatever it is that they are doing and drop to the floor, where they should proceed to roll around until the flames have been completely smothered and stopped. Any clothing has been burned should be removed right away - where it is stuck to the skin, cut around it but never attempt to peel that off.
Accessories, such as belts, ties, watches, and other jewelry should also be removed from off of the victim. The reason why this is important is because those parts of the body that have been burnt start to swell very fast and very considerably and so these items could soon become very restrictive.
Degree Of Burn
The severity of a burn to an individual is categorized as either a first degree burn, a second degree burn, or a third degree burn. It is the latter of these that is the most severe and sees even the deepest layers of skin tissue damaged.
