Shawnahan King was at a friend’s house in Homestead, FL, in 2018 when he noticed the fire was beginning to die in the outdoor firepit. Surrounded by friends and family, including his eight-year-old son, King went to re-ignite the fire when his body burst into flames. “Like a thousand other times in my life, I […]

Wayne (Barry) Johnston had been a lineman for 20 years when on June 27, 2006, he was electrocuted while working a job in Mississippi. “All I know is that somehow when I was working on a line that the power surged,” Johnston said. “The [electrical] line was supposed to be dead, the way I was […]

At just three years old, Malik (MJ) Bryant suffered burns on more than 54% of his body when a grease fire ignited in his home on July 18, 2019. What was a routine day for parents Elijah Turner and Precious Christian proved calamitous when cooking grease—settled in the eye of the stove—immediately ignited after it […]

In the early morning hours of March 8, 2021, Guerda Fontaine was prepping lunch boxes for her two children when turning on the propane tank engulfed her in flames. “Upon the propane exploding, the house itself exploded, the windows exploded, everything just exploded,” said Mrs. Fontaine. “I just heard the explosion and didn’t really understand […]

Megan Hawthorne and her boyfriend, Braydon Nunnery, were pulling a kneeboard behind a jet ski on a river in Florida on Aug. 9, 2020, when the rope got stuck in the propeller. The couple shut off the engine and managed to swim the stalled jet ski to the nearest sandbar before flagging down a friend […]

Eighteen-month-old Kyrie Gilchrist wailed on the floor. His body was covered in hot grease. “My husband and I both ran over to where the stove is, and that’s when we noticed that he had pulled the frying pan down on himself,” said Kyrie’s mom, Natalie Gilchrist. Originally from Virginia, the Gilchrists’ were visiting family in […]

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On January 25, 2020, Karen Worthy, Ph.D., MPH, RN, CNE, thought she had the flu. Fever, cough, and muscle aches were all symptoms she experienced when she had the flu the previous year, except this time was very different. As the day progressed, she began presenting other worrying symptoms that indicated not only a possible […]

Kidnapped and set on fire, Stacy Frank was left to die. “I had second and third degree burns on 40 percent of my body. Both my arms, my chest, and up to the very bottom of my cheek from the bottom of my lip down are burned,” said Stacy. “The doctors gave me only a 20 […]

“I guess, when you’re going through something that horrific, you aren’t thinking clearly, because I just wanted to run through and make sure everyone was out. I thought I was Super Woman, going to save everything and everybody,” said Patricia. Oct. 24, 2013 was a routine morning for Patricia Perkins. The 44-year-old beautician from Little […]

Nearly six months after he was severely burned, Kevin Vann walked out of the Joseph M. Still Burn Center at Doctors Hospital. To this day, room 7 in the Burn ICU remains a constant reminder to Kevin that, in a time of uncertainty, he was given the gift of a second chance. “There’s people that […]

Shop with a Doc, the annual holiday celebration of some of the youngest burn patients treated at the JMS Burn Center at Doctors Hospital in Augusta, may  have looked a bit different this year, but that doesn’t mean there was any shortage of holiday cheer. The event, sponsored by the Burn Foundation of America, brought […]