A Douglas County high school senior is expected to make a full recovery after catching on fire during a chemistry demonstration. And she has two teachers and a classmate to thank.
The accident happened Thursday night during an Advanced Placement Open House at Chapel Hill High School, Gordon Pritz, school system superintendent, said in an emailed statement.
“One group of students, under the supervision of their teachers, was demonstrating the identifying of chemicals by the color of their flame when burning,” Pritz said. “During this process, a flammable liquid dispensed from the container unexpectedly fast and ignited, involving a 12th grade female student and catching her on fire.”
A teacher standing nearby got the student to the ground and attempted to extinguish the flames, the school system said. Another teacher ran approximately 30 feet away, grabbed a fire blanket and handed it to a male student, who ran to place the blanket on the girl.
The burned student, whose name was not released, was transported by ambulance to Grady Memorial Hospital, where she is being treated for burns covering 25 percent of her body. She is expected to make a full recovery.
On Friday, Major Tommy Wheeler with the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office said his son, Will, was the male student who grabbed the fire blanket to help extinguish the flames.
“You don’t often get a chance to say, ‘Hey, look what my kid did,’ when he really did something,” Tommy Wheeler told Channel 2 Action News.
Surveillance cameras inside the school captured images of the incident.
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