“I don't say anything that the firemen wouldn't say. It's just that sometimes hearing it from somebody who's been through it is a stronger message.”
Decades after surviving a fire that burned 80 per cent of her body, one Okanagan woman has spent her life teaching others about fire prevention and safety in the hope of making a difference.
On February 4, 1983, Lynda Llewellyn, who now lives in Oliver, woke up to find her five-year-old son Adam in the living room of their Edmonton apartment completely surrounded by flames.
“When I called him he didn't respond,” she said. “So as a natural instinct of any parent, I just went in and got him and I tucked him in under my arm. I took us to my bedroom, because that was the furthest room from the fire, shutting doors as I went along, shut the door behind us, and rolled us both in the blankets on my bed.”
Llewellyn opened her window to see her neighbours gathered in the street, three stories down below.
“Shortly after I got there, my hand started to really hurt, they were quite badly burned and I was having trouble holding on to Adam.”
She carefully dropped her son to a friend who caught him and put him into a tub of cool water.
“As a result of the cooling, Adam's burns never were as bad as mine. They never went as deep. They didn't cover as much of his body. He wound up with burns to about 40 per cent of his body, which at the age of five was still life-threatening.”
Llewellyn crawled up onto the window ledge to get off her feet, which were hurting from being so badly burned. Eventually, she was brought down by two firemen and rushed to the hospital.
She spent five months in the University of Alberta burn unit and was moved to spend three months at the rehab hospital in Edmonton.
From there, Llewellyn spent two years in outpatient physiotherapy to learn to move her hands again and 13 years getting plastic surgery to repair her skin.
“We have this concept that plastic surgery will make you look however you want to look. And the reality is that, particularly in a burn survivor, that's not possible, because they can only use your own skin,” she said.
“I think my doctors did a fabulous job with what they had to work with. I think I look great. I'm very comfortable with how I look.”
Three years after Llewellyn got out of the hospital, a local fireman in Edmonton asked her to come with him to a high school presentation on burn prevention and share her story, in hopes that hearing it from somebody who had gone through it might sink in with the kids.
“I was hooked. I loved it. And it took another 10 to 15 years before I could do it full time because I needed to find somebody who could pay me to do it. But I did eventually get into it.”
Llewellyn spent a decade speaking full-time at schools across Canada.
“The first time I talked to a group of grade three, four students, and when you're talking prevention, they've all got something to say about ‘Oh, I did that’ Or ‘I remember that' or ‘I know somebody who did that.’ The minute I started telling my story, I'd never heard a group that large, that quiet. They listen.”
“What I feel is that I don't teach anything different than the firemen would teach. But because I look different, they listened differently.”
Llewellyn said she gears the story depending on the age group she’s talking to. At her busiest, she would speak to 10,000 kids a year.
“I just firmly believe that the kids need to hear the message often. I think all of us hear the message and we go, ‘Yeah, whatever.’ But then when you're actually in a situation, if you've only heard it once or twice, it maybe isn't as clear,” she added.
“When my fire happened, Adam had been to the fire hall twice, once with kindergarten and once with daycare, the week before the fire happened. So I had all the pamphlets at home about stop, drop and roll and get down low and all the things that we needed to do. And it was fresh in my mind.”
She’s also teaching acceptance to the students.
“The gift I have for teenagers, particularly girls, is to be able to say I like how I look. Because as a teenage girl, I can remember struggling with not looking the same as everybody else.
“My hair's curly and when I was growing up straight hair was the thing and I would iron my hair and I would do all kinds of things to look the same as everybody else. And the message should be you're beautiful the way you are. You don't have to look like everybody else to be beautiful.”
And her scars come with what she said is a blessing too.
“People remember me because I look different. I'm not the same person as everybody else and so I stand out.”
Speaking over the years has also helped Llewellyn process the trauma of what happened to her.
“I'm a strong believer in if you talk about things, they lose their power over you. So being able to talk about it meant that it really has no power over me.”
Llewellyn said she truly enjoys the time she gets to connect with kids.
“If kids look at me when I'm out shopping and they're curious, I will engage with them and talk to them about 'Yeah, I know, I look different. Do you want to know why?'”
The message Llewellyn wants to spread is that almost every injury is preventable if people are paying attention, with the top three causes of fires in North America being cooking, unattended candles and leaving out smoking materials.
“The other message from my fire that I stressed all the time was to make sure your smoke alarms work. Mine didn't. There was no battery in it.”
Now settled in Oliver for retirement, Llewellyn said she plans to continue to speak to students, offering up her time.
If you have a group or class that would like a presentation, send Llewellyn a message over Facebook or reach out over email at [email protected]
