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Subscribe to RSSInvestigators believe hand sanitizer and static electricity may have sparked fire that burned an 11-year-old Oregon girl in her bed. KGW's Mike Benner reports.
Update, Feb. 20, 2013: A mix of hand sanitizer, olive oil and static electricity was apparently to blame for a hospital fire that burned an 11-year-old Oregon girl earlier this month. Oregon State Fire Marshal investigators said Wednesday that olive oil used to remove medical testing residue likely combined with hand sanitizer and sparks from static electricity created by bedding and clothing to start the blaze that left Ireland Lane with serious injuries, according to Rich Hoover, a spokesman for the agency.
Feb. 19, 2013: Hand sanitizer ignited by static electricity is being investigated as the potential source of a hospital fire that severely burned an 11-year-old Oregon cancer patient, officials said Tuesday.
No cause has been determined yet for the blaze that sent Ireland Lane screaming into a hallway, her T-shirt ablaze, at Doernbecher Children’s Hospital in Portland on Feb. 2.
But Rich Hoover, a spokesman for the Oregon State Fire Marshal’s office, said that flammable sanitizer and a spark of static electricity could be to blame for the rare incident.
“Those are definitely part of the investigation,” said Hoover, who expected the probe to be complete by Wednesday.
Ireland was diagnosed with kidney cancer in 2007, her father, Stephen Lane, told the Oregonian newspaper. But she was being treated for a head injury after a fall at school. She was transferred to Legacy Oregon Burn Center after the fire, which burned 12 percent of her body, according to her father.
Lane, of Klamath Falls, Ore., told NBC News affiliate KGW that he was dozing in his daughter’s hospital room when he was awakened by her screams. She ran out of the room and into the hallway, where her father covered her with his body to snuff the flames. A hospital unit coordinator and a nurse manager also rushed to smother the fire, hospital officials said.
“I remember being scared at first, but my hard memories are of putting her out,” Lane told NBC News. “It’s hard to see your child hurt at all, but to be on fire and screaming …”
Doernbecher officials worked quickly to get the girl to intensive care, according to spokeswoman Tamara Hargens-Bradley. Ireland has had one skin graft, her father said.
Ireland apparently was working on a craft project in her hospital bed just before the fire, Hargens-Bradley said. She was using hand sanitizer and may have gotten some of the substance on her shirt, her father said. It is possible to create static electricity with sheets and plastic bedcovers or room furnishings, but reports of such sparks starting fires are very rare.
“We’ve never heard of it in Oregon,” Hoover said.
Doernbecher, a hospital in the Oregon Health Sciences University system, uses hand sanitizer that is 60 percent alcohol, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends, Hargens-Bradley said in a statement.
Sanitizer has been rarely implicated in hospital fires. In 2006, a nurse with wet sanitizer on her hands caught fire from a spark from an oxygen flow meter in an oxygen-rich environment, said Mark Bruley, vice president of accident and forensic investigation for the ECRI Institute, a health care safety organization.
Bruley said it would be "extraordinarily rare" for static electricity to spark a fire from hand sanitizer, but it is possible, he told NBC News.
"A spark could ignite the vapors," he explained.
Ireland, who was set to leave the hospital the day the fire occurred, must have more skin grafts this week, her father said.
“Our hearts go out to the child and her family. Nothing like this has ever happened at Doernbecher,” Dr. Stacy Nicholson, the hospital’s physician-in-chief, said in a statement. “We anxiously await their findings and will certainly make adjustments if the cause was preventable.”
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We hit the lottery! Quick, who do we sue first?
The hospital? They shouldn't allow sanitizers, why do they have to be so clean?!
The sanitizer manufacturer? There should've been more warnings! She wouldn't have used it if it were known this were even possible!
The protons and neutrons that created the spark? The static electricity instigated the matter!
For the love of God, WHO DO WE SUE FIRST????
I'm not seeing anywhere that they're suing the hospital. While I dislike people who file frivolous lawsuits, there's no reason to go off the handle about it for this story.
Must be jealous, as it appears that you think that way!
The father did it! He set her on fire in a jealous rage before pretending to be asleep...
One word for you Bowenhardcase - Idiot! As any parent of a sick child knows, money does not buy good health. I can guarantee you that all they are focused on right now is their child. It is the money grubbing lawyers that will be hounding these folks that worry me.
I do wish her the best of luck. But really, shouldn't someone of thought about the fire issue with a liquid material that is 82% alcohol ?
Poor kid, but this happened on the day she was to leave and now she's in ICU? Munchausen syndrome by proxy???
Check again Lori, I believe the connotation is that she was supposed to be leaving and NOW she's in ICU for the burns...
What a terrible comment! You should be ashamed of yourself.
ri,
honestly, my first thought was the same as the above poster...something just doesn't add up
This child and this family need lots of prayers. Cancer, head injury and now severe burns - this is a lot for any one person to endure.
Hand sanitizer and static electricity...Hmm, that's a stretch considering millions use it everyday. Has to be more to it then that.
Best wishes to the little girl and her family. (24 year cancer survivor myself)
There was more" olive oil" and static electricity. And some of the worst luck a child can have. As her her grandmother I can say if you had cancer" you must know that her having it 3 times all over her body and the treatments were hell. So ya she's had a hard life and she is only 12....
Alcohol is listed on the label and yes its flammable, another product created to keep us all safe again hurts us!
Use soap and water,it works and it doesn't start fires...old school not a new age fool WORD
Yes stick to good old soap and water. Especially in light that these sanitizers actually do not work, and are causing less amunity to germs.
Brillo, yup brillo or scothcbrite with Dawn detergent or bleach for the tough ones...
I'm a Microbiology student at a University. Hand Sanitizers get rid of the certain bacterias but for a few seconds at most before coming back real quickly and studies show that they weaken muscles in the body. The best cleaning method is soap and water.
studies actually show that hand sanitizer is just as effective at killing bacteria as soap and water, and since it is easier and more readily available, is more likely to be used. since a hospital doesn't get paid for hospital-acquired infections, I doubt very much that we would use alcohol-based hand sanitizer the way we do if your 'studies' were accurate, because we would be spreading infection right and left rather than rarely. I think you need to question the source of your info
They have revamped that finding and now say they are not working and are overused and causing people to actually being made sick and being more harmed by germs.
Just exactly who are "they" Bill? Care to provide any sources for your claims?
I may be wrong, but wasn't the findings more accurately reported as hand sanitizer was effective, but was only marginally more effective than washing with soap and warm water?
In the end, the sanitizer has minimal benefit over "old school" hand washing, yet it presents more dangers and side-effects.
1) it is flammable, but this static electricity theory sounds like a stretch
2) there is no evidence of muscle problems
3) Side effects are not any more than soap
4) it works just as well, if not better than soap
Hand sanitizers work well on many bacteria, but not spores or certain viruses (norovirus). They also don't remove bacteria like soap and water. Hand sanitizers have their place, but if you send germs down the drain, you don't need to worry whether they are alive or dead.
true, but these are not all that common. Furthermore, in a hospital setting, these patients are classified as contact precautions requiring certain barriers, and a sign endorsing hand washing
this is false. vigorous motion removes bacteria--you can do that with hand sanitizers too. Plus, hand sanitizers are bacteriocidal--soap may not be
My prayers to Ireland and her family.
So much pain and suffering for one little girl to go through. Cancer, head injury, then a freak fire while AT the hospital? Best wishes to the girl for a full and speedy recovery so that she and her family can begin enjoying the carefree childhood that so many of us take for granted.
Odd? Yes. Possible? Yes. Improbable? No. I guess statistically it was bound to happen somewhere sometime to someone, it's just sad that somewhere was a hospital and that someone was a child. Not that it wouldn't be sad if it had happened to anyone else.
"as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends". CDC
There we can add another one to our list.
We already have the FDA Federal Death Administration.
f
So we should go back to wiping our butts and then touching someone's food? A freak accident doesn't invalidate CDC recommendations. And without the FDA, you would have no idea whether your drugs were real, fake, contaminated, full of heavy metals, etc. But if you like being a guinea pig, go for it. Fake or untested drugs cause a lot of poisonings in other countries.
120 proof hand cleaner? That's pretty strong.
Not very tasty though, has a mean afterbite..now if you chase it with tequila, then we're talking.
God must really have it out for that little girl. =/
All of you germaphobs need to come into reality. The more you destroy germs (there are GOOD germs out there that help get rid of the bad germs) the more likely you are to get sick. The smell itself tells you its full of alcohol which is flammable. Remember when penicillin was used to cure many illnesses. Well it was used so much that those illness are now resistant to it. The same thing is happening with hand sanitizers. Use soap and water if you HAVE to feel like you've come into contact with some life threatening germ.
Soap and water will put the fire out and anyway hand sanitzer's contain bacteria.
No flame retardant garments in hospitals? Tee shirts and casual clothes should not be worn by patients.
Casual clothes are allowed at the children's ward of our hospital. I'm not sure about the rest of the hospital.
They let me wear childrens clothes when I went to the hospital, but I'll tell you that I tore open every opening since they didn't fit well.
When the Hand Sanitizers were first installed at my Hospital,
I noted to the Higher Powers that the product was highly flammable
Within a month the product container doubled in size. Take it from there.
I'm just a little too skeptical about the hand sanitizer-static electricity connection. Doesn't seem remotely possible that the charge in the static electricity would be enough to ignite anything, especially diluted alcohol. There's more to this story.
My heart goes out to this little girl and her family.
I do think that fumes from the hand sanitizer could be ignited by a static spark. That being said, thank God there wasn't O2 flowing at the time (or was there?).
This would be a good test for the Myth Busters team to see how it could happen.
My two kids ran some experiments yesterday to try and reproduce the fire. They tried a few different hand-sanitizers with the same percentage of alcohol and both validated whether they were flammable and if they could be ignited with electricity. They had a very difficult time getting sparks to ignite the stuff.
Video of the tests on YouTube titled 'Hand sanitizer + static = ?'
I agree, there is more to this story. As someone mentioned my first thought was also either Munchausen or Munchausen by proxy syndrome.
Sounds fishy to me. My first thoughts were the same as Doc Garcia's.
Seems fishy. I agree with DocGarcia.