Fire Damage

[shelomit]

Welp, my dad just started an oil fire that engulfed the whole stovetop. Good news: the house is not burning down. Bad news: this all occurred right as I happened to be putting my hair up. While putting out the flames, my hair briefly caught fire.

I was able to find some old threads, but most of them are just expressing sympathy without any solid suggestions/follow-up of the people's experiences. Does anybody have experience dealing with burnt hair? Despite having fought a lot of prairie fires in the interim, I haven't actually caught my hair on fire since I was a little kid. (Well, technically my eyebrows were burned off more recently than that. . . also as a result of the inherently unstable combination of Dad + fire.) The main thing I'm wondering is whether the singed bits need to be taken out and, if so, how far above the end I ought to be clipping them. If there's anything else I could be doing to baby that part of my head, let me know--?

The fire caught at the middle of the strands, not the ends. I probably had it patted back out within half a second. I was able to pull out some of the ends that had been burnt off; judging by how many of those there were, I don't think I lost all that much, maybe a lock of 1/4" diameter. It was actually kind of difficult to spot the singed ends as I detangled my hair; I sort of feel like there should be more than I'm seeing based on what came off. The smell is still overwhelming, though--both in the air over by the stove and in my hair : P

[FrayedFire]

Yikes! Glad it wasn't worse. If you can find the singed ends, S&D them just above the damage, if not, I wouldn't worry about it too much. Some SMT or whatever DT you prefer ought to take care of it. I burn my hair more often than I'd like to admit, and the damage tends to be negligible, so I think you're probably safe, from what you described.

[shelomit]

I should have known somebody with "Fire" in their username should be trusted to rescue me : )

By "above the damage," do you mean above the kind of blob at the bottom of the strand, or above the wiry/crumpled-looking part? My hair has some kink to it always, so I'm having some difficulty telling where the singed wirey-ness gives way to plain ol' wirey-ness.

[FrayedFire]

I should have known somebody with "Fire" in their username should be trusted to rescue me : )

By "above the damage," do you mean above the kind of blob at the bottom of the strand, or above the wiry/crumpled-looking part? My hair has some kink to it always, so I'm having some difficulty telling where the singed wirey-ness gives way to plain ol' wirey-ness.

Hahahaha! Happy to help.

Hmm... I would say the crumpled part, but not too much of it if your hair has that texture naturally. The blobs need to go, but the damaged stuff can be babied - it should feel different to the touch, where the heat hit it but didn't destroy it.

[Sarahlabyrinth]

Oh, I'm so glad nobody was seriously hurt - and that your burnt hair was a relatively small amount. What I would do, I think , is S& D the ends of the burned hair and treat it like split ends. Then a good wash and moisturising treatment and see how that goes.

[Laurab]

Goodness! What a thing to deal with.

I would guess this should be treated like excessive heat damage, since that's technically what it is.
I'm guessing the fried parts of your hair are really really dry, so deep conditioner of course, and then maybe try some protein treatments? My understanding is most hair damage can't be undone, but you can get it looking it's best and prevent further damage.

All in all if you had to pick something to get hurt in a fire, a small lock of hair would probably be on the top of your list. Hopefully this'll be something you can laugh at soon enough.

[embee]

Wow! I sure am glad you're ok, the house is ok, the Dad is ok. I'd hate to be leading a song IMO you at Ila on New Year's! ;)

I've not burned my hair except for occasional strands when lighting up cigs years ago, so take this as a "what I would do". I'd not try anything major until seeing how things are after the basic "pull off the burnt bits" and some TLC pampering. Hope the damage is minimal.

[enting]

Oh gosh! I'm glad everyone's all right.
I'd cut above the blobs, and then wait and see after a wash how those bits feel. If you can feel a difference at that point, then snip those burnt bits out too. If you can't really tell there probably isn't any harm in leaving the bits you're not sure about.

[lapushka]

Oil fires can be daaaangerous! I'm glad you guys are OK! That is the most important part.

I would also cut above the "blobs", that's probably where hair was boiled and "splattered", it usually will form a straight angle and you could pull it straight off (don't do it, it will split there).

I'm glad it's not too too bad! Yikes, that could have been so much worse!

[Obsidian]

I had a accident with exploding gas fumes years ago. Caught my whole head on fire and burned off my eyebrows.
I got it out quickly though with no injury besides some minor redness on a cheek.
I just trimmed off the damage which was quite a lot on one side, ended up pretty short.
Didn't have any kind of lasting damage from the heat. Once it was cut, that was the end of it. Besides teaching me a healthy respect for using gas to start fires that is.

[Linden]

I've burned the ends of my hair off from leaning against a wood stove with my hair down. I didn't really do much about it; the ends that were melted/black crumbled off when I felt them, and I just lived with what was left. I agree with the above posts, a deep condition would probably help.

[shelomit]

Thanks to everybody who offered advice and experience. FrayedFire and Lapushka, you're exactly right: it's way easier to feel where the singed part begins/ends than it is to see it. I've never used heat on my hair, so the "heat damage" feel is very new and weird to me. I honestly don't think I lost all that much, although the smell is still terrible. Will do a little trimming tonight and then probably leave it alone till wash day.

I'm grateful it wasn't bad, but in retrospect also kind of astonished that I haven't set my hair on fire before. My parents' ranch is in an area prone to dry lightning and high winds. We don't have a fire department, so I've fought tough, fast-moving prairie fires on foot on many occasions. I've caught all my clothes on fire while running buckets at least three times, but for whatever reason my hair had always escaped!

embee, say hi to John and Elsie for me! You probably won't run into me at a singing until late spring/early summer--still "out west."

[Dark40]

Welp, my dad just started an oil fire that engulfed the whole stovetop. Good news: the house is not burning down. Bad news: this all occurred right as I happened to be putting my hair up. While putting out the flames, my hair briefly caught fire.

I was able to find some old threads, but most of them are just expressing sympathy without any solid suggestions/follow-up of the people's experiences. Does anybody have experience dealing with burnt hair? Despite having fought a lot of prairie fires in the interim, I haven't actually caught my hair on fire since I was a little kid. (Well, technically my eyebrows were burned off more recently than that. . . also as a result of the inherently unstable combination of Dad + fire.) The main thing I'm wondering is whether the singed bits need to be taken out and, if so, how far above the end I ought to be clipping them. If there's anything else I could be doing to baby that part of my head, let me know--?

The fire caught at the middle of the strands, not the ends. I probably had it patted back out within half a second. I was able to pull out some of the ends that had been burnt off; judging by how many of those there were, I don't think I lost all that much, maybe a lock of 1/4" diameter. It was actually kind of difficult to spot the singed ends as I detangled my hair; I sort of feel like there should be more than I'm seeing based on what came off. The smell is still overwhelming, though--both in the air over by the stove and in my hair : P

Yikes!!! I remember as a kid that part of hair caught on fire too, and I had hair spray in it. I was blessed that my mother was standing right next to me to put it out with her hand. I didn't have any damage (Thank God) but I did a few hairs but that was it but it left an awful odor. What happened was some older lady bumped into me with a candle as we were marching up on the choir stand to sing in a Christmas Catata. What I thought of the old lady was that she was just jealous of me and my beautiful long hair.

The best thing to get rid of burnt hair is just cut it off and baby it as much as possible.

[giraff]

Gee! I’m glad you’re okay, though. Do post updates :)

[lithostoic]

I've burned my hair a few times, never badly enough for significant damage. As long as you are careful from here on the hair should be fine c:

[0xalis]

That's super scary... I'm so glad you're okay!! The only time I've burnt my hair before it was my bangs so I just trimmed them.
And yeah, that smell is pretty horrible lol.

[lapushka]

Yikes!!! I remember as a kid that part of hair caught on fire too, and I had hair spray in it. I was blessed that my mother was standing right next to me to put it out with her hand. I didn't have any damage (Thank God) but I did a few hairs but that was it but it left an awful odor. What happened was some older lady bumped into me with a candle as we were marching up on the choir stand to sing in a Christmas Catata. What I thought of the old lady was that she was just jealous of me and my beautiful long hair.

The best thing to get rid of burnt hair is just cut it off and baby it as much as possible.

Nobody in their right mind does this on purpose, though!

[AnyaWK]

You would have to deep moisturizer the hair and keep doing this until the hair gets a bit more life...do massage your sculpt while having oil in your hair gently to let it absorb properly, the ends which is too singed should be cut off..

I had a similar experience when I went to a trainee saloon technician to chemically straighten my hair. It resulted in a disaster where my hair became dry, damaged and very bleached looking afterwards. Luckily I had done some Avuvredic treatments on my hair to remove the damage. And I had cut off the ends, now my hair is back to it’s healthy status and in time your hair would too...don’t worry too much...just take proper care of it you would be fine...��

[Dark40]

Nobody in their right mind does this on purpose, though!

Yes, you are definitely right!

[SleepyTangles]

So glad you were not burned and that the house Is ok!
For the hair, I'd deal keeping It bunned and giving It a month of DC and babying before assessing the damage and trim.

[shelomit]

Thanks again for the advice and the good wishes, guys. A little update: after two mindnumbingly boring evenings parked in front of the computer in our otherwise poorly lit house, I think I have most of the burnt ends trimmed out. Did one round of deep conditioning followed up with my regular conditioner mid-week. Wetting it immediately sparked up that horrible smell again, which has yet to go away : P My hair seems to be behaving well overall, although it does have some stiff-feeling strands partway down the hair on the left side, where I presume I've missed trimming out some burnt hairs. I will go batty if I work on it any more right now, though! Since I did the CO wash mid-week (which I typically don't), I might end up moving my "real" wash day later--it would ordinarily be Sunday. Will probably keep up with this method for a while.

By the way, I posted a photo of Dad's extremely hard-won desert over in the "Happy Holidays" thread, but here it is too:

https://i.postimg.cc/wTvxVBpV/20191226-195727.jpg (https://postimg.cc/fkGhWDkt)

[SleepyTangles]

Hard-won indeed! Hope it taste good ;)

[shelomit]

The ones that were not burnt were delicious ( ; These are Sephardi (Iberian-Jewish) doughnut-type things called "bimuelos," which you serve with orange blossom syrup. They are typical to have for Hanukah.

[0xalis]

The ones that were not burnt were delicious ( ; These are Sephardi (Iberian-Jewish) doughnut-type things called "bimuelos," which you serve with orange blossom syrup. They are typical to have for Hanukah.

That sounds amazing... Want!!!!! :inlove:

[shelomit]

That sounds amazing... Want!!!!! :inlove:

Well, kind of late for this year, but here's the recipe if you want ( ;

Beat four eggs. Boil together 1 c water, 4 T butter, 1 T sugar, and a pinch of salt so that the butter is all melted and the sugar dissolves. Mix in 1-1/4 c flour and 1/2 T baking powder. Let the mixture sit until it is cool enough to touch. Add in the beaten eggs and mix very thoroughly. The dough should be very smooth. Depending on how humid it is, I sometimes have to add a little more flour to make it cohesive.

Boil together 1 c water and 2 c sugar; let cook for ten minutes. Take it off the heat and add in 1 T orange blossom water.

Heat a saucepan of oil. Drop a spoonful of dough into the oil. They expand a lot, so you can't cook many in the same pan at once. Let them cook until they are floating at the top of the pan and are a golden color on all sides. Take them out of the oil and roll them in cinnamon sugar.

Drizzle with the syrup right before eating! I usually put the syrup in a squeeze bottle so people can add as much as they want.

[0xalis]

Well, kind of late for this year, but here's the recipe if you want ( ;

Beat four eggs. Boil together 1 c water, 4 T butter, 1 T sugar, and a pinch of salt so that the butter is all melted and the sugar dissolves. Mix in 1-1/4 c flour and 1/2 T baking powder. Let the mixture sit until it is cool enough to touch. Add in the beaten eggs and mix very thoroughly. The dough should be very smooth. Depending on how humid it is, I sometimes have to add a little more flour to make it cohesive.

Boil together 1 c water and 2 c sugar; let cook for ten minutes. Take it off the heat and add in 1 T orange blossom water.

Heat a saucepan of oil. Drop a spoonful of dough into the oil. They expand a lot, so you can't cook many in the same pan at once. Let them cook until they are floating at the top of the pan and are a golden color on all sides. Take them out of the oil and roll them in cinnamon sugar.

Drizzle with the syrup right before eating! I usually put the syrup in a squeeze bottle so people can add as much as they want.

Oh, thank you!! :D

[Sarahlabyrinth]

Well, kind of late for this year, but here's the recipe if you want ( ;

Beat four eggs. Boil together 1 c water, 4 T butter, 1 T sugar, and a pinch of salt so that the butter is all melted and the sugar dissolves. Mix in 1-1/4 c flour and 1/2 T baking powder. Let the mixture sit until it is cool enough to touch. Add in the beaten eggs and mix very thoroughly. The dough should be very smooth. Depending on how humid it is, I sometimes have to add a little more flour to make it cohesive.

Boil together 1 c water and 2 c sugar; let cook for ten minutes. Take it off the heat and add in 1 T orange blossom water.

Heat a saucepan of oil. Drop a spoonful of dough into the oil. They expand a lot, so you can't cook many in the same pan at once. Let them cook until they are floating at the top of the pan and are a golden color on all sides. Take them out of the oil and roll them in cinnamon sugar.

Drizzle with the syrup right before eating! I usually put the syrup in a squeeze bottle so people can add as much as they want.

These sound delicious! How do you know when the oil is hot enough? And how do you stop it catching fire? (I have never deep fried anything at home for fear of inadvertently causing a fire).

[shelomit]

These sound delicious! How do you know when the oil is hot enough? And how do you stop it catching fire? (I have never deep fried anything at home for fear of inadvertently causing a fire).

As long as you manage not to spill hot oil all over the top of a (gas) stove, you are very unlikely to have problems with fires! My dad has both poor judgment and poor luck in re: fires, so he's an outlier case. Obviously, you have to be gentle when manipulating the bimuelos in the oil so as not to splash it on yourself, but I've never had any trouble even though I don't consider myself an adept deep-fryer (I usually only fry things once a year, for the Purim holiday).

I usually wait until the oil looks like it's a uniform color/texture; the warmer parts shift a bit as you first start to heat it. Then drop in a teensy bit of batter. Once the batter rises to the top and there are bubbles forming rapidly around it, the oil is hot enough. Then you can take out the little batter bit and start making proper bimuelos ( : They will still sink to the bottom right as you add the batter and then float to the top shortly afterwards.

[Sarahlabyrinth]

As long as you manage not to spill hot oil all over the top of a (gas) stove, you are very unlikely to have problems with fires! My dad has both poor judgment and poor luck in re: fires, so he's an outlier case. Obviously, you have to be gentle when manipulating the bimuelos in the oil so as not to splash it on yourself, but I've never had any trouble even though I don't consider myself an adept deep-fryer (I usually only fry things once a year, for the Purim holiday).

I usually wait until the oil looks like it's a uniform color/texture; the warmer parts shift a bit as you first start to heat it. Then drop in a teensy bit of batter. Once the batter rises to the top and there are bubbles forming rapidly around it, the oil is hot enough. Then you can take out the little batter bit and start making proper bimuelos ( : They will still sink to the bottom right as you add the batter and then float to the top shortly afterwards.

Ah, ok - thanks! They do look delicious!

[enting]

Ah, I was wondering if it was holiday related. At least some tastiness came out of it, too!
I'm terrible with frying, I usually get tiny oil spatter burns all over my hands. I still do it though. I don't think I'd be brave enough to try bimuelos or sufganiot though, for fear of burning myself badly.
I've heard so many terrible reports of fires caused by Chanukah candles. I am glad it wasn't that.

[FrayedFire]

How's your hair?

[Groovy Granny]

:thud: I missed this post....OMG...how scary :tmi:

Thank goodness you and he are ok!



How's your hair?

Yes....how is your hair??

[MamaLou]

I had some fire damage in my hair because of a soldering iron (oops), not nearly as much as you did. The damaged hair ended up blending in with my healthy hair and I'm not able to find the damaged strands anymore (but it is now two years later).

[shelomit]

How's your hair?

Whoops, I didn't see this reply at the time!

The update: I kept finding burnt ends and cutting them out for probably six months. They would often poke out of my braid and, because they are much stiffer and less flexible than the rest of my hair, get caught in the fabric of my scarf or shirt. For that reason, I do think it was necessary to keep clipping them. Partially in response to this incident and everyone's advice, I started doing CO washes. It was, again, several months before the right (burnt) side of my hair started to feel the same overall texture as the left (non-burnt) side. Through this experiment, I've discovered that my hair responds very well to CO washing and have kept it up. Honestly, the thing that bugged me the most was the smell. I didn't find anything to hurry up the process of getting rid of the smell, though I suspect that snipping out the burnt bits helped at least a little. I always like when I've been around woodsmoke and get a little pop of that smell upon getting my head wet--but burnt hair??? Ew. Nothing but time for that one.

Ultimately, I think I lost a lock of about 3/8" or 1/2" diameter from the waist down. A little over a year after The Bimuelo Incident, I honestly can't even really tell where the damaged section begins any more. I just fanned out my hemline in front of the light from the computer, and there's definitely less on the right side. It's no longer possible to see a clear demarcation between the burnt and non-burnt areas, though. Nor did I lose enough for it to make it harder now to do, an evenly sized English braid on either side of my head.

oIf anyone is wondering: no, we did not make bimuelos this Hanukah!

[JasminxCat]

I burnt my hair in the toaster trying to get a cigarette lit, burnt my hair opening the oven and sticking my head to close, burnt my hair on the flat top grill at an old job when I was cleaning it :lol: Bunch of times. The sizzling, frying noises my hair would make. It would look like hay and I would have to chop it off on several different sections because of this. I'm not as careless as I used to be though

[FrayedFire]

Glad to hear it eventually sorted out, and you discovered your hair likes cowashing!

[shelomit]

Glad to hear it eventually sorted out, and you discovered your hair likes cowashing!

Thanks! Your advice, besides being practical, helped calm me down during the initial panic stage ( ;

[barnet_fair]

I managed to burn a tiny part of my hair yesterday while lighting the fire. Feeling very foolish, because I was browsing this thread just the other day, but with a "that could never happen to me" attitude.

While striking a match, a bit of the match head broke off and flew into the middle of a long lock of hair hanging over my shoulder. Like shelomit, the damage happened in the middle of the strands, not the ends. I immediately patted it down and made sure nothing was alight. There was a distinctive smell, but I thought to myself "that can't be burnt hair, because it's a nice smell". It turns out I find the smell of burnt hair pleasant..!

There were about 20 hairs next to my ear with 1-2mm blonde-ish blobs on the end, which looked quite prominent in my dark brown hair. Interesting to see upthread that these blobs can be black on other people's hair. I trimmed the ones I could see just above the visible damage, which was a little tricky as they were too short to bring in front of my eyes, so I had to use a mirror.

Thanks for the advice in this thread and stay safe everyone!!

[Feral_]

Eek! Glad you peeps are ok. It’s so easily done. I almost singed mine bending down to put wood on the fire, it brushed the top of the wood burner, which certainly isn’t the same as a naked flame but does get very hot.

[WavyWannabe]

In 2017 or 2018 I was cooking and decided to let my hair down. I was just getting into the habit of wearing my hair up and out the way.
Something smelled weird, but I checked the pot and everything was fine.
Then I felt something rough on my elbow... And of course it was my singed ends!
I had just let my hair make friends with the hot stove :doh:
I heavily S&D'ed that side of my hair, which was already thinner to begin with.
Luckily it didn't bother me too much and I forgot about it.
But since then I know my hair cannot be trusted around hot stoves and other fire sources, so up it goes whenever I cook, even just for boiling water!
Maybe some of us have pyromaniac hair.

I'm glad your hair recovered after the incident!