THE sun shining down, Levi Stanford and his wife Amy looked across the picturesque reservoir and gave each other a quick kiss. Married just five days earlier, the young newlyweds were still in celebration mode and had gone to the local beauty spot with six family members for an afternoon of swimming and relaxing. 6 Levi, in hospital after the accident Credit: Levi Stanford But that wasn’t all.
Levi, then 23, had something else - something very special - in mind to commemorate their big day and impress Amy , then 24. “I grew up in the country and explosives were a part of life, they were used in mining work as well as building dams and demolition work on our farm,” says Levi. “So I designed a device to create a huge geyser of water to shoot out of the reservoir and up into the air.
" Wanting to get the blast on camera, Levi asked his brother to start recording as he walked down to the shore and lit the fuse on his home-made device. He was supposed to have 60 seconds to throw it into the water before it went boom - but instead, the device exploded immediately, blowing his left hand to pieces. I looked like a blood-soaked zombie.
I thought I was dead - my entire body was covered in shrapnel. “Somehow - probably because of the shock - I didn’t pass out,” Levi, of Calgary, Canada, says. “I looked like a blood-soaked zombie.
I thought I was dead - my entire body was covered in shrapnel. Blood was gushing from the wound. “I was trying to celebrate my marriage - inst.