For some burn survivors, returning to the scene of their accident is a traumatic experience. For Detroit firefighter John Bynum, who was injured on the job, returning to the scene was one of the turning points in his emotional recovery.
Before he went back to the scene of the house fire where he was trapped in a basement when the floor collapsed, John kept reliving the experience in his memory and wondering what he could have done to prevent his injury. Often he thought to himself, “it couldn’t have been that bad.”
Once he saw the remains of the house, he had a better understanding of what happened. “I was surprised to see that it looked a lot worse than I expected it to,” John explains. “It helped me to realize how blessed I was.”
John Bynum was injured on April 11, 2001. He had been on the job only a month when his fire crew responded to the scene of a house fire in a four family dwelling. John entered the first floor of the house and began spraying water on the flames. All of a sudden the floor collapsed and dropped him into the basement, near the origin of the fire. When he fell the buckle on his helmet came loose and his helmet fell off. He got steam burns on his head, neck, and extremities due to the radiant heat.