WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGES A WA surfer has suffered serious burns to 13 per cent of his body, including his face, in a boat fire blast while chasing waves on a solo trip overseas. Jensen Kirby, 19, had spent the week in the Telo islands, a tropical paradise off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, when on August 11 he hopped on a boat heading out to a break for an afternoon surf. But he was soon at the centre of a medical emergency after he was engulfed in a huge ball of flames when a mishandled boat battery ignited petrol fumes.
“(The mechanic) put the negative to the positive and the positive to the negative. As soon as it touched, the battery exploded and sparked big flames around me,” Kirby told 7NEWS.com.
au. Kirby, who sustained burns to his face, chest, arms, hands and legs, turned to the water and jumped in. After a few moments he tried to get to get out to assess the situation, unclear if the boat would explode again, but was overcome with pain, his whole body burning.
He dived back into the water but hit the sand, peeling all the burnt skin from his leg. Kirby, from Perth , eventually made it to a shower where he spent 15 minutes running cool water over the wounds, calling his mum back home in WA and telling her “don’t freak out, the boat just exploded and I’m burnt”. After coming out of the shower, he lathered himself in all the burn cream he could find.
But he was stung by searing pain again as he waded through the warm ocean water to another boat that wo.