Story By: Anna Guran, Sub Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Central European News
Video Credit: CEN/Ministry of Emergency Situations
This is the brave little six-year-old boy fighting for his life after suffering 90 percent burns when he tried to save his granddad from a raging inferno.
The tragedy happened in the Prionezhsk District in the Republic of Karelia in Russia when the boy named Vishnea Svytoslav was at home with his grandparents.
His grandfather, who was not named, started to light a fire in the bathroom in order to heat the water for a bath when he is believed to have been taken ill and collapsed, knocking over the stove and starting a fire.
The boy had tried to rescue his grandfather, but aged only six had been unable to move him as the fire spread, and the youngster only fled when he himself was engulfed in flames.
He ran out of the house where his grandmother realised what was going on, and rushed over to extinguish the flames, but not before they had engulfed the little boy’s body giving him 90 percent burns. He had also inhaled a significant amount of burning air damaging up to 20 percent of his lung capacity including his upper respiratory tract.
Andrei Yartsev, a doctor from the Russian emergencies Ministry said: “A sanitary evacuation of a six-year-old child injured in a fire was carried out. The child received burns of 90 percent of the body, his condition is assessed as extremely serious.”
Medics say the boy was on death’s door for three days at the Children’s Republican Hospital of the city of Petrozavodsk in Karelia, and although still critical they have now been able to fly him to a specialised clinic in the larger city of Nizhny Novgorod where his mother Julia Vishnea, 28, in an interview with Central European News (CEN) appealed to people to pray for her son.
She told CEN: “He needs to be able to hang on for a few more days to have a real chance at life. I appeal to people to pray that our Svyatik will pull through. He is strong anyway but with our support, our prayers and our faith, he will be even stronger and will be able to pull through.”
She confirmed that the tragedy happened when Svyatoslav and his grandfather went to stoke the fire in order to heat water for the bath, and that at some point grandfather had fallen unconscious, knocking over the stove and starting the fire.
She also praised her son for his bravery and determination to try and save his stricken grandfather. She said: “We still don’t know why he (the grandfather) fell ill. Svyatoslav did not leave him and instead tried to use all his strength to get him out of the bathroom.”
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