Boy mocked for failing to light a f ire at Scout camp went home to practise ... and this was the result
WHEN Edward Hawkins couldn’t manage to light a fire during a Scout trip, he was teased by his fellow young campers.
So he resolved to prove to them that he could get a blaze going.
After returning home, the 14-year- old stacked up wood in his front garden and doused it with petrol as his mother took his brother to school.
Armed with a camera phone to capture the moment, he put a match to the pile – then watched in horror as flames immediately spread to his father’s shed, which held two explosive gas canisters.
Edward then frantically tried to empty the outhouse of his father’s expensive tools – but a petrol can exploded and soaked him as he stamped the flames. The fire then spread up from his feet, engulfing his clothes and body before blistering his hands and face.
He put out the flames on his clothes by rolling on the ground as neighbours raced to throw wet blankets over him.
Edward, from Wainscott in Kent, said later: ‘I just remember thinking, I need to put out the fire and I need to get the tools and gas out of the shed. Apparently I was shouting, but I couldn’t feel anything, I was just panicking.’ Neighbour Len Cracknell, 74, heard the teenager shouting for help and called the fire brigade, which arrived with an ambulance within minutes.
Others on the street ran to his aid and soaked his burns until paramedics could take over. His mother Carol, 49, a party planner, returned from dropping off her other son to find Edward about to be taken into the ambulance.
She said: ‘I just abandoned my car and sprinted up the road, screaming for Edward. All I could hear was him saying “Mummy, help me, please help me”.’ Firemen managed to put out the blaze in the shed, though it left £10,000 of damage to the gardening equipment belonging to Edward’s site manager father Eddie, 48.
Edward suffered superficial burns to his face and is now waiting to hear if he will need a skin graft to a bad burn on his thumb. He was taken to Medway Maritime Hospital, before being transferred to a specialist burns unit. He was released on Thursday, six days after the fire.
His mother added: ‘This all came about because those Scouts teased him when he couldn’t get his fire going. He just wanted to show them he could light one, bless him. Unfortunately I think he went a bit too far.
‘The firemen said to us the two gas canisters were seconds off exploding and if they had, Edward might not be here today.’