Flash Fire Kills Patient on Operating Table

In my second year of training--1964, I was doing a surgical rotation. Now, remember, those were much different days when class A oxygen tanks were used in every area and in every OR. Anyway, I was assisting with my first herniorraphy and then there was a great earthquake feeling and ceiling tiles and windows were breaking and falling. We found out later that across the courtyard from us another student nurse was assisting with a T&A on an adolescent. In her zeal to impress and do a good job she was said to be running around like crazy doing everything she was told. She inadvertently knocked over the class A oxygen tank that the patient was using. It exploded killing her, the patient and the doctor. It also blew out the whole side of the OR room. All I remember is a big hole in the side of the building that we all just stared at and could not believe. Other patients were hurt on the floors beneath the OR room, but no other fatalities. That is as close as I have ever come to anything like this story. This story stll terrifies me. I think of it everytime I see a class A tank.

Back in the days when ether and cyclopropane were used, things like this were not unusual.

Keep in mind that electric tools were rarely used in those days.



Edit: What is a class A oxygen tank? I get the impression that it is large.

Just for the sake of asking, since I haven't been trained in fire safety in the OR...

How do you put the fire out on the patient? You can't just spray the person with a fire extinguisher, especially when the fire is on an open surgical site. How common is infection related to this?

In my second year of training--1964, I was doing a surgical rotation. Now, remember, those were much different days when class A oxygen tanks were used in every area and in every OR. Anyway, I was assisting with my first herniorraphy and then there was a great earthquake feeling and ceiling tiles and windows were breaking and falling. We found out later that across the courtyard from us another student nurse was assisting with a T&A on an adolescent. In her zeal to impress and do a good job she was said to be running around like crazy doing everything she was told. She inadvertently knocked over the class A oxygen tank that the patient was using. It exploded killing her, the patient and the doctor. It also blew out the whole side of the OR room. All I remember is a big hole in the side of the building that we all just stared at and could not believe. Other patients were hurt on the floors beneath the OR room, but no other fatalities. That is as close as I have ever come to anything like this story. This story stll terrifies me. I think of it everytime I see a class A tank.