Petrol flames leave Cork boy critical

A 13-YEAR-OLD boy remained in a critical condition in hospital last night after suffering extensive first-degree burns to his stomach and chest when he became engulfed in flames while handling a bottle of petrol in Cork city at the weekend.

The boy, named locally as Ciarán Callanan from Mount Nebo Avenue in Gurranabraher, was with four other boys aged between 13 and 16 when the accident happened at Mount St Joseph’s Avenue in Gurranabraher at about 9.30pm on Sunday.

Gardaí believe the boys had gone to waste ground off Mount St Joseph’s Avenue to try and inhale petrol vapours and were heating petrol in a plastic bottle to speed up the vapourisation when some petrol spilled onto Ciarán and he became engulfed in flames.

A woman in a nearby house on Mount St Joseph’s Avenue spotted the accident and alerted her husband who raced out with a fire extinguisher. He managed to extinguish the blaze before wrapping the boy in blankets.

The woman had meanwhile raised the alarm and the emergency services were quickly at the scene. A team of ambulance paramedics took the boy to Cork University Hospital.

A Health Service Executive South spokeswoman confirmed the young boy was admitted to the burns unit in the hospital’s intensive care unit. Doctors worked to stablise him before he was transferred to Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital in Crumlin yesterday afternoon.

Meanwhile, a Garda spokesman confirmed that gardaí had recovered a number of bottles of petrol from the scene of the tragedy. The site was being examined by a Garda technical expert to establish the exact sequence of events.