Back in 1982

My brother was in charge of taking care of the waste oil burner at the shop...

They looked something like this back then...

Every morning his job was to fire it up, there was a method to this, 

Every morning he opened the door and tossed in a couple rags lit on fire and closed the door, this allowed the unit to heat up before feeding it fuel.

After a couple minutes he would walk back over to it and crack the waste oil valve spraying used automobile oil and other drained fluids into the burner. He would set the flow and go to work on the cars coming in the door.  This went on for quite a while. 

One day, the Shop Foreman arrived for work early, he decided since he was there he would get the shop up and running. He turned on all the circuit breakers and the lights. He then decided to get the waste oil burner going. He turned the fuel on and tried to lite it. Nothing, the fuel was cold and not entering the system fast enough. Unable to get it running he walked away.

A half hour later, my brother came into work, he grabbed the pile of rags,  lit them up, opened the door and through them in...

I was at the front customer counter that day, the day the building shuddered. With the bang and ensuing noise I ran to the shop. The fuel which the Foreman had put into the heater had warmed up and began to vaporize, it had been a sealed vessel fully charged with fumes for about a half hour.

Arriving at the shop found all the suspended lights in the shop burning as was most of the floor and walls on the opposite side of the shop. The flame guard, a flat cast iron plate which hang down just inside the burner door was embedded in the wall opposite the burner, roughly 30 feet away. My brother who for a few minutes was a walking Human torch had been tackled to the ground by another mechanic and wrapped in fender liners to quell the flames.

He actually made out pretty good considering, 2nd degree burns to his face, arms and legs, with patches of third degree to his left leg, stomach and neck. A little while in the hospital and a bit longer time at home was used up before he came back to work. As he sat in his living room during recovery his face was a yellow and red oozing mess. If he did not require glasses for everyday use he would have most likely been blinded.

In a matter of seconds a normal world turned upside down. Receiving burns like that upsets your body's normal system, it weakened his heart, gave him blood sugar issues and shortened his life, the doctors gave him a life expectancy that the family did not find about until after he passed away. Five years after the explosion he would take his wife to the movies, in the middle of the film he grabbed his head and fell over dead, a Brain Aneurysm.  

You never know when it will be the last time you see someone. Make sure you do more then blow them off when they say something to you. As I did with him as they were heading out the door to the movies. "Yeah, yeah, whatever", isn't the last thing you want to remember saying to someone.