Blast that left more than scars

Every year burns survivor Rick Smith raises a glass of fine Scotch whisky and toasts life with the man who dragged him to safety 20 years ago.

No mirrors exist in the burns unit, Rick Smith says, as he reflects on seven weeks spent recuperating in Hutt Hospital.

Instead he used the faint reflection in stainless steel bars near his bed to glimpse his blackened face.

Third-degree burns covered 30 per cent of his body, mostly to his hands and legs the result of an electrical explosion at Defence Force headquarters in Stout St.

"You get a very distorted picture of what you look like," Mr Smith, now 51, says. "They don't give you a mirror. You see the look on people's faces looking through the window. I knew I was okay but it was obviously startling to them."

Just before 10pm on July 4, 1989, Mr Smith, an MED Capital Power electrician, and security guard Terry Hood who was giving him directions climbed scaffolding to reach a first-floor substation. Inside the room, Mr Smith, 31, began routine tests of the circuit breakers but one of them had been installed without oil in its switch chamber, he says.

"Although the circuit breaker appeared ... to be almost brand new it was in fact a bomb waiting to go off." The explosion was heard around Wellington and caused blackouts as far south as Brooklyn.

It flung Mr Smith several metres and catapulted Mr Hood backwards through the open doorway. The room was filled with flames and molten copper spat from the circuitry. Mr Hood survived the blast with nothing more than singed hands from patting down the flames on Mr Smith's hair and clothes, but the trauma of the night has remained.

"It was a big flash. I don't remember thinking. I just reacted. I heard Ricky screaming ... and I realised he was still in there. When I went inside he was on fire. I knew I had to get him away from the flames. His pants had vapourised. There was nothing left."

It was over five months before Mr Smith returned to work and he spent seven weeks in hospital enduring several painful skin-graft operations.

When his mother, Nola Smith, arrived at the hospital she did not recognise him. "She walked in and ... she went back out and said `That's not my son.' As soon as I spoke she knew it was me."

Within 24 hours of the explosion, Mr Smith was visited by Ross Weddell, the man who was to counsel him during his recovery.

A year earlier Mr Weddell had survived serious burns to 75 per cent of his body when he was caught in a gorse fire while working as a volunteer firefighter in Upper Hutt.

Spurred by his experience, he and a group of nurses started the Burns Support Charitable Trust to help others through their recovery.

Mr Weddell says helping burns victims come to terms with their new body image is one goal, but helping motivate them to return to productive and positive lives is the most important thing.

"We have this thing in burns that you're a burns victim when it happens and you're a burns survivor when you get over it. When I first met Rick he was a victim. He was hell-bent on having someone lose his job because of his accident. Right from day one, we could offer Rick a path to travel."

Mr Smith says he received words of encouragement from doctors and nurses but it had more weight coming from someone who had been through a similar ordeal. "Coming from him ... it had a much greater impact."

But the fact that his accident was caused by someone else's mistake made it hard for him to move on and he battled years of anger.

"It shouldn't have happened. Someone had stuffed up. I certainly went through some stages."

Mr Weddell says that, when broken bones heal, there are generally no visible scars but burns survivors are reminded every day of their accidents when they have a shower or look in the mirror.

"It's not always easy to put it behind you. We are reminded every day that we were almost no longer here."

In 1999, Mr Hood attended an awards ceremony at Government House to receive a New Zealand Bravery Decoration for dragging Mr Smith from the flames.

His citation reads that his "actions saved the life of the electrician", but he is not comfortable with the tag of hero.

"He would've been dead of course he would. I did the right thing at the right time. I just reacted without thinking. I was there with him. That's what I'm so grateful of."

Mr Weddell says of Mr Smith today: "He's definitely over the bitterness of the accident and he's moved forward. You're a victim if that incident still haunts you 20 years down the track. Rick's not a victim. He's a survivor."

- © Fairfax NZ News