APRIL 11, 2015
OLYMPIA, WA
On April 11, 2015 Matison Long, of Olympia, WA, went out to
her car with a friend to enjoy her lunch. To give herself more leg room, she
pushed the driver's seat all the way back. She never expected that moving the
chair would cause her car to burst into flames.
As Long got comfortable, she unknowingly pressed the seat
into a bottle of de-icer she had forgotten was in her car. Long said, "It
was literally like a pop, like a helium balloon popping, and then it was
silence. There was nothing for maybe 30 seconds." Reportedly, the
electrical wiring of the power chair, combined with the liquid from the
punctured chemical bottle, caused a fire to break out.
The 21-year-old quickly noticed that her own arms were
ablaze, and she jumped out of the vehicle to quash the flames. "I did
stop, drop and roll for maybe 30 seconds and then I got up," she said.
Long looked down at her arms and body and could tell that she was severely
burned, so she called 911. Shortly after, she was flown to Harborview Medical
Center at the University of Washington in Seattle to be treated.
Betta Long, Matison's grandmother, spoke to Fox 13 about the
incident. "The car, there's no dashboard, there's no steering wheel.
Inside is complete hash." The fire had spread through Matison's vehicle
and sparked an explosion, destroying everything inside.
Matison was lucky to survive the accident, and now she's
hoping others will learn from her experience. She has been in the hospital for
the last 10 days, where she is in stable condition, and waiting to find out if
she will need a skin graft.
Source: http://www.womansday.com