Fire can lead to burns of all kind, including burns in your airways that result from inhaling hot smoke. That said, smoke inhalation is sometimes considered a burn injury and other times it isn’t. It all depends on the specifics of your case. If you have inhaled smoke then you do have options as far as a personal injury case is considered. Read on to learn more about smoke and burn injuries, and then contact Law Offices of Fernando D. Vargas at 909-982-0707 for your free case evaluation.
More people die from inhaling smoke than from burn injuries
According to the most recent estimates, about 7 out of 10 people who die due to a fire die not from being burned but from inhaling smoke. Why? Because smoke has a ton of harmful substances, super-hot particles, and gases that can be deadly. According to experts, it’s impossible to accurately predict what smoke from a particular fire will contain – it depends largely on what combination of things is burning.
Inhaling smoke causes damage in a number of ways
There are a number of ways that a person can be injured by inhaling smoke from a fire. Simple asphyxiation is what happens when the fire in question consumes 100% of the available oxygen, or when the products of the fire end up taking over the space that the oxygen needs.
Compare that to chemical asphyxiation, which happens when some of the smoke, especially carbon dioxide, causes damage at a person’s cellular level. It then prevents them from being able to use oxygen, so even though there may be enough oxygen available, they aren’t able to breathe it.
Then there’s chemical irritation. This refers to what happens when what makes up the smoke damages a person’s skin or their mucous membranes. The result is that the airways collapse, or they swell, and the eventually respiratory distress happens – which can lead to death. Finally, there’s thermal irritation, which happens when a person breaths in smoke that’s very hot, and their airway is injured as a result.
Smoke inhalation is not always a burn injury but it’s always serious
Though not every injury that involves smoke inhalation would fall under the umbrella of a burn injury, it’s always a dangerous situation. In many cases, it can result in a wrongful death. If that death happened as the result of someone else’s negligence, then you may need to speak to a California personal injury attorney to find out what your options are.
The easiest way to get the information you need is to call Law Offices of Fernando D. Vargas at 909-982-0707 for your free case evaluation. We can speak with you about what happened, who was at fault, and what your options are. If we decide to work together, we’ll take your case on a contingency basis, which means you won’t pay us a cent upfront. Call us right away to get started.
