Man Who Burned 73 Percent Of His Skin In Horrific Fire At Age Six Recalls Bullying He Faced Over His Scars

A man who burned 73 percent of his skin in a horrific fire accident when he was six years old has recalled the brutal bullying he faced over his scars.

Terry McCarty’s life was changed forever after a mistake by his brothers resulted in his whole body going up in flames.

What came next was years of grueling pain and extensive surgeries as doctors tried to fix the damage.

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But almost as bad as the physical impact was the mental impact, as adjusting to his new body was extremely difficult for McCarty. All the while, he faced cruel comments from his peers and constant stares in public.

Even so, when McCarty entered adulthood he decided to face his ‘trauma’ head on and became a volunteer firefighter.

McCarty, now 39, from Spokane, Washington, spoke exclusively to the Daily Mail about the horrifying ordeal and his lengthy journey afterwards.

McCarty explained that the incident occurred in 1992 after he went outside to tell his two older brothers, age 10 and 12, that it was time to come in for dinner while they were out walking the neighbor’s dog.

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He found them playing behind a nearby house with a dog bowl… but it turns out, they had filled the bowl with kerosene and were lighting it on fire as part of what they thought would be some innocent fun.

Terry McCarty’s life was changed forever after a mistake by his brothers resulted in his whole body going up in flames. He’s seen before the incident

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He burned 73 percent of his body and what came next was years of grueling pain and extensive surgeries as doctors tried to fix the damage

‘I got down there about the same time that they were successful at lighting this bowl of kerosene on fire,’ he explained.

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‘But when it caught fire it scared them so they kicked the bowl. What they didn’t know is that they kicked the bowl in my direction.

‘The bowl flew at me and hit me in the chest, wrapping the flames contents around me.’

Even now, than three decades on, McCarty said he remembers the moment distinctively.

At first, he didn’t realize he was on fire, but said it felt like ‘everything around him was on fire.’ But then, the ‘pain kicked in.’

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‘It was immense,’ he shared. ‘I tried to do what came to mind first and that was to stop, drop and roll but that didn’t quite work for me as kerosene is not that easily extinguished.’

A neighbor who was getting out of his car noticed McCarty on fire and thankfully grabbed a sleeping bag from his trunk and threw it on top of him, which put out the blaze.

He was rushed to the hospital where he learned that 73 percent of his body had been burned.

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Recovery was long and painful. He was in the hospital for an entire year and has had a whopping 58 surgeries

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He recalled spending over five hours a day changing his bandages, and being covered in scars meant he constantly dealt with stares in public and cruel comments from classmates

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And when he finally was allowed home, adjusting to his new body was extremely difficult. He recalled spending over five hours a day changing his bandages

Recovery was long and painful. He was in the hospital for an entire year and has had a whopping 58 surgeries.

And when he finally was allowed home, adjusting to his new body was extremely difficult.

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He recalled spending over five hours a day changing his bandages, and being covered in scars meant he constantly dealt with stares in public and cruel comments from classmates.

‘I started to really get a lot of bullying and teasing and was getting made fun of,’ he admitted.

‘(And) a lot of people would stare at me (in public). I mean I still get people that stare at me today but back then I had a lot of staring and the name calling.

‘I’ve been called everything from Michael Myers to Freddy Krueger to burnt toast, all sorts of names.

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‘It was a very difficult transition for me to process because here I am thinking to myself, “Oh my God I actually survived all of this and I’ve gone through all these surgeries and I’ve had to overcome all of these things” and people don’t understand those things.

‘They don’t understand the pain, the trauma and the process of what it means to be a burn survivor.

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Being covered in scars meant he constantly dealt with stares in public and cruel comments from classmates

As an adult McCarty became a volunteer firefighter and came ‘face to face’ with flames a lot

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‘It took me a long time to really get a grasp on trying to accept that people were like that. I couldn’t figure it out for a long time.’

As McCarty entered into adulthood, he struggled to find a job, which he believes was because of the accident.

‘People would constantly look at me and treat me like a victim and I even had people tell me that I would be a liability to go work for them at their company,’ he said.

‘I got really tired of just continuously getting this label of victim and I thought to myself, I need to do something that will stop all these people in their tracks and just give me a fighting chance.’

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So he did something unexpected: he applied to become volunteer firefighter.

‘I did it mainly out of spite,’ he reflected. ‘(It felt like) my one shot to take myself from being a victim to being a survivor.’

McCarty had to come ‘face to face with fire’ a lot during his training, but admitted that it was ‘not triggering for him at all.’

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He spent two and a half years working as a volunteer firefighter before he left to work full-time for a non-profit organization that supports children who are burn victims like him

In fact, he believes that his past made him a better firefighter as he had a strange ‘fondness’ and ‘respect’ for fire after seeing what it could do first hand.

‘(That training) helped me confront any remaining fear that I may have had within myself… I really confronted the last frontier of my demons and I was able to move forward without any kind of issues,’ he said.

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He spent two and a half years working as a volunteer firefighter before he left to work full-time for a non-profit organization that supports children who are burn victims like him.

And now, he is a certified peer support specialist who works with people going through addiction recovery.

He is extremely outspoken about what he went through in the hopes that it’ll give strength to others who may have gone through something similar.

‘You are not what happened to you. You are what you choose to become after trauma,’ he concluded.

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