12/4/2023 0 Comments Worst burn victimsHis shirt, he recalled, lit up like a lantern. There was a whoosh and then an explosion. In July 2013, he stepped onto the deck of one of the newly finished homes for Halliburton employees and leaned over to light a cigar. ![]() The head of a Whitefish, Mont., construction company, Malmquist came to the Bakken to build housing for oil workers. And then there is the emotional recovery: Severe burn patients can face post-traumatic stress disorder on par with soldiers.Īdvances in burn treatment mean that some oil workers who would have died a decade or two ago now have a chance. They harvest the top layer of skin from a healthy part of the body and graft it over the artificial skin tissue.Įven after recovering from those surgeries, patients must still do months or years of physical therapy to fix the loss of flexibility in their skin. Then they apply bioengineered tissue made of cow collagen and shark cartilage to function as the new dermis. Burn doctors excise the damaged skin to prevent infections. Serious oil field burns destroy what’s known as the dermis, or the thicker, second layer of skin that contains blood vessels and sweat glands. And doctors at Regions regularly travel to the Bakken to talk to medical staff about treating burns in the early stages. Joseph’s Hospital in Dickinson, N.D., recently traveled to a Galveston, Texas, hospital to learn burn management techniques. “That’s become more and more of an issue because we have all these Bakken oil trains that come rolling through just one after another,” Fey said.īakken hospitals are looking at how to improve burn care. While no one was injured, members of the medical staff are examining how they would address an oil train accident that caused mass burn injuries. HCMC paid closer attention to oil field burns after a train carrying Bakken crude derailed in Casselton, N.D., 13 months ago. He died.Īnother dozen Bakken burn victims have been treated at the Hennepin County Medical Center in the last three or so years, according to its burn unit director, Ryan Fey. Oilfield workers are brought to Regions almost once a month, including a patient last month who had been working on an oil heater near Mandaree, N.D., that ignited. Gary Ramage, medical director at McKenzie County Healthcare Systems in North Dakota, said he sends patients out of state if the burns affect their respiratory system, face or hands - the most difficult areas to treat - and at least 10 percent of their body. The staff assesses whether the burns are severe enough to fly them to burn centers in the Twin Cities, Salt Lake City or Denver. When a truck carrying crude crashes and explodes, or an oil rig blows out, burn victims are initially taken to a hospital in the Bakken. States with low populations, like the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming and Idaho, have not been able to justify opening such expensive, specialized facilities. Hospitals nationwide have been closing burn units and are grappling with a shortage of burn doctors. Some needed limbs amputated and had burns that bore down into the bone. One died after arriving with 98 percent of his body burned. Mohr said oil field burns are three or four times bigger than those of the average patient and that Bakken burn victims who come in to Regions are more likely to need ventilators. The extra time it takes to move patients poses a medical challenge, since care administered in the first day factors into burn patients’ long-term recovery. Just 17 percent of North Dakota residents can be transported by air or ground to a burn center within two hours - fewer than every state but Alaska and Montana. ![]() “The burns from the oil fields can be pretty dramatic,” said Bill Mohr, a surgeon at Regions. An oil field worker’s treatment at a burn unit can cost $1 million. While other kinds of injuries may be more common, oil field burns are among the most painful and costly to treat. The Twin Cities is the closest place to go for patients like Kyle, 27, who agreed to be interviewed on the condition that his last name not be used. Despite the flammability of Bakken crude and the danger of oil-rig work, North Dakota has no burn centers. It was the worst pain he’d ever felt.īurn injuries among North Dakota workers have surged to more than 3,100 over the past five years, as the once nearly barren prairies have become the epicenter of a massive oil-drilling boom. His legs were burned so deeply that the bottom layer of skin would never grow back. ![]() Paul last month, after a 600-mile plane ride from the oil fields of North Dakota. Hours later, Kyle woke up at Regions Hospital in St. “It almost sounded like chicken frying in an oiler.” “You could just feel it cooking my legs,” he said. ![]() Flames seared the pants off Kyle’s legs as he raced across a bed of ruddy red rocks, screaming for help.Ī pipe on a machine processing oil at high heat had burst, soaking him in methanol and sparking a fire.
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