A mother of children in the U.S. state of Maine is lucky to be alive, after a gas leak caused a huge explosion that destroyed her home and left her with second-degree burns. It’s like an explosion of hot air going through you “
Tamara Maclean from the state of Maine in the USA was isolated in her home after she became infected in Corona last October, she put a quantity of laundry in a tumble dryer in her basement and was in the middle of going up the stairs when suddenly an explosion was heard.
“It was my last day in isolation, so I went out with my friends,” she told local media, whose appliances at home work on propane gas. “I pressed the dryer button and I was on my way up from my basement and an explosion occurred,” she continued. “The explosion blew me back, but I grabbed the wall and tried to figure out what happened, because not every day you feel that way, it’s like an explosion of hot air going through you.”
The 45-year-old woman said she lost her sense of smell while battling the corona virus, so she could not detect the gas leak, which filled her home until after the explosion was heard.
Maclean’s survival instincts worked, and she was exhausted from the burning house. “I could hear my hair sizzling and burning,” she recalled. “I could feel my face and hands with burns but I just did not know the meaning of it.” McLean said she was starting to see parts of the house fall, so she ran up the stairs outside.
“I did not look around because my main focus was to get out, but my house of course exploded. I was in a state of survival, my mental state was ‘I need help now’,” she said. McLean managed to get into her car, dial the police emergency numbers – 911, and drive a few miles to the fire station where she received help.
“When it first happened, I didn’t know I was in so much pain because I was in shock,” she said. When she arrived at the fire station, she was airlifted to the hospital and hospitalized in intensive care with second-degree burns that covered nearly a third of her body.
After a long rehabilitation, she was eventually released, she returned home and found that her residence and property had been completely destroyed in the blast. “My house is completely gone. It exploded so many times that it knocked down trees in the forest,” she said. “Nothing is left, not even a toothbrush. Everything is just gone.”
The mother said she still had to undergo regular treatments for her burns as well as adjust to physical changes, having lost all her hair in the explosion and being left with scars.