A North Carolina bride-to-be was forced to call off her wedding six days before the event after she was engulfed in flames and her face “melted” off.
Brenley Davis was sitting with her then-fiancé Justin Davis in August 2020 when she noticed the kitchen was full of smoke. That’s when she realized that she had left the stove on for an hour with a pan of oil sitting on top of it.
“I was making French fries. I thought I’d turned the oil off but it had been on the stove for an hour on medium to high heat,” Davis told Kennedy News.
Davis, 22, rushed into the room and turned off the heat while her fiancé opened doors and windows.
“The next thing I knew it started smoking. I removed the lid, turned it off and pushed the pot off the burner,” she recalled.
However, the wind coming in from the window only made matters worse and caused the oil to leap into the air and “burst into 30-inch flames.”
“We opened the windows and back door and I guess the air that came in from opening the windows fueled it,” Davis remembered. “It automatically caught on fire and the flames were so high that it was burning the cabinets.”
“My husband called the fire department and he was standing outside on the back patio,” the bride said. “I was just standing there watching it burn and next thing I knew, my adrenaline kicked in.”
David said she “grabbed the pot and ran with it,” and looking back, she has no clue why.
“I still don’t know what possessed me to grab a pot with 30-inch flames coming from it,” she said.
As she was running, Davis said the flames were scalding her body.
“The flames were so high that it was burning my face, arms, ribs and chest. Once I got outside and threw the pot, the fire [blew] back on my leg,” remembered Davis. “The flames were still going and I ran through it. It then got the bottom of my feet.”
By the time the fire department arrived, Davis had sustained second and third-degree burns to her face, arms, ribs, chest, legs and feet.
“I felt like my whole face had melted off. I was so scared,” said Davis.
Davis said that the shock of what happened kept her numb to the pain of the burns, for which she was admitted to the hospital’s trauma unit.
“When my mama saw how much pain I was in, she wanted to kiss me but she couldn’t. She took her nose and gently rubbed it on mine but my skin peeled off,” Davis stated.
Despite having nuptials in less than a week, the bride-to-be said she couldn’t even perform daily tasks, let alone walk down the aisle.
“I couldn’t feed myself, I couldn’t use the bathroom and could barely walk. Justin took care of me. He was upholding his vows before he’d even said them,” she said. “He was having to do everything for me.”
Following the accident, Davis had to undergo a series of painful procedures, including having each of her blisters drained before undergoing skin graft surgery and grueling physiotherapy in an effort to get her arms moving and the skin stretching.
The pain did not end there, though. According to Davis, her body scabbed over causing her to be overcome with extreme itching before doctors pulled off her scabs along with bandages.
On top of that, she said she’s never been the same since the accident.
“My skin was very red and still had blisters but the worst part overall was my mental health,” said Davis. “This has changed me. It’s made me stronger. I had PTSD and I’ve had dreams about being set on fire and the house burning again.”
“I had to keep reminding myself that I’m here for a reason, I’ve survived and that I can use this positively,” she added.
In November 2020, Davis and her hubby finally managed to tie the knot.
“It was a wonderful wedding even though we [previously had] to cancel everything six days before. It was a beautiful wedding,” said Davis, noting that “you can still see the bumps from the skin grafts” in her wedding photos.
Davis said that she almost asked the photographer to edit it, but was convinced not to alter the images by her mother.
“I was a little bit self-conscious and part of me was going to ask the photographer to blur out my red skin grafts but then my mama told me ‘You’re beautiful no matter what.’ I accepted it and told myself not to be self-conscious.”
Davis is now urging people to be mindful while cooking dinner for the holidays.
“For people cooking over Christmas, it’s very easy to forget about stuff being turned on on the stove,” said Davis. “It happened to me. I was trying to bake a cake, cook and do the French fries all at once. I totally forgot about the grease.”
“Try not to get stressed or rush. If you’re stressed, you make mistakes. Do research and have fire extinguishers.”