A thrilling escape from the hot tar

Early in the morning, 30-year-old Mark finished his two-week vacation and was about to leave for the factory. On the porch, his wife Juliet hugged him tightly to say goodbye.

Mark works in a local asphalt factory. He is not tall, but he is strong and can work hard. Before the two-week vacation, he had been working for 10 consecutive weeks without a day off, in order to rush a batch of asphalt for a road repair project.

Mark sometimes worries that his day and night work will neglect his concern for his family, but he has no other way. Because the family needs money so much, the high home loan has weighed on him, and two years ago, the youngest daughter Jessica suffered from cerebral palsy again. The Marks are reluctant to give up their treatment for Jessica, and they hope that God can create a miracle for their Jessica. These days, Mark is thinking about buying Jessica a wheelchair again so Juliet can push Jessica outside.

Disaster strikes unexpectedly

At 7 a.m., Mark drove his pickup truck to the factory, hurriedly had a cup of coffee with everyone, and started his intense work. The first thing Mark will do today is to climb up the high tar furnace to change a ventilation pipe. When he got into the boiler, he felt the heat in the furnace coming up through the rubber shoes, and he knew the tar in the jar was hot enough to bake himself into a pie. Mark thought to himself, "The sooner I finish it, the sooner I can go down."

Suddenly, Mark heard a high-pitched sound, and he looked around to find a breathing valve in the middle of the furnace hissing, indicating that the air pressure in the furnace was rising. Before long, Mark heard the furnace tank start to rumble, and then the whole furnace tank began to vibrate, and the vibration continued to intensify, and Mark realized that the furnace tank was about to explode!

"I have to go down right now," Mark thought. At this time, cracks had begun to appear in the top of the furnace tank, and tar was constantly coming out of it. The top of the furnace was at least 15 meters from the ground, and Mark gritted his teeth and jumped off the top of the furnace. As soon as he touched the ground, Mark felt a piercing pain from his knees, and he knew that his knee cartilage must have broken. He wanted to stand up, but as soon as he got up, he fell to the ground in pain. The hot tar had already dripped all over the floor, and Mark was falling into the tar. The tar burned through his short-sleeved undershirt and work pants. Mark was suddenly in severe pain, with large blisters on his back and burns on his face.

Mark struggled to stand up and tried to run forward, but before he could take a step, he heard a muffled sound, and suddenly a heat wave rushed over from behind. Ke looked back, and the whole furnace of tar was washed out by the huge air pressure, and rushed towards him together. Before Mark could react, he was swept down by the wave of tar and fell several meters out. Mark had half an inch of tar on his body. The hot tar scorched his skin. His ears, mouth and nose were filled with tar.

"Water." Mark then remembered that a year ago he and his co-workers had dug a pond 200 meters downhill from here, which might be his only hope of survival.

Although the knee injury was so severe that he could hear the creaking of the bones with a little movement, Mark stood up with difficulty and tried to move towards the pond. But as soon as he took a step, Mark fell with a bang. It turned out that the ground was so slippery with tar that he couldn't walk at all. Almost desperate, Mark got up again and moved forward. The tar on the ground began to cool, becoming sticky and more difficult to walk. "Oh my God!" Mark cried out in despair.

Still not giving up, Mark tried his best to move forward, and finally moved to his truck outside the door. He leaned against the door and looked through a gap in his left eye to the pond, the only place on his body that wasn't covered by tar. "I can definitely do it." He cheered himself up.

Worker Stephen Haas was talking to his boss in the office when he heard the explosion. When he ran out, he saw only a black man staggering out of the furnace room. Stephen was terrified and hurriedly shouted, "Call the ambulance!" Then the jet-black guy walked towards the pond and plunged into the water.

Disaster after disaster

The moment he threw himself into the water, Markton felt a lot more relaxed. Because of the thick tar wrapped all over his body. Markton quickly sank to the bottom of the water. When he realized this, it was too late to struggle to float. The tar on his body was too heavy, and after the tar cooled with water, it became like gum. His hands and feet were completely bound. Mark struggled desperately at the bottom of the water, but with a little effort, the tar tore off the skin on his hands, and the torn wound met the water, which made Mark's pain even worse. At this time Mark felt suffocated, and he thought he might be drowning here.

Mark has been lifting weights for more than ten years, but he didn't expect it to come in handy this time. He couldn't bend his hands and feet, so he pushed his whole body up with a pair of stiff hands, tried to stand upright, and then pushed his head out of the water with his feet. But when he got to the surface, Mark couldn't breathe, because the tar had blocked his nostrils and his mouth was full of tar, so Mark had to use his tongue to push the tar out of his mouth first, and then he resumed breathing.

Stephen also ran to the edge of the pond at this time. Although he didn't know who the man in the water was, he comforted him and said, "It's alright, we've notified the ambulance. They'll be there in a minute." But Mark knew in his heart how serious his condition was. He had heard others say before that if 50% of a person's body was scalded by tar, he would definitely not survive.

But Mark was reluctant to give up. Before this, he had never given up on anything easily. In weightlifting competitions, he has never been teased for his short stature. In one competition, he raised 700 pounds on his first try. Someone laughed at him: "You can't lift you're just a lightweight." As a result, by the end of the game, Mark's best score was 800 pounds, which is about 5 times his weight, and no one dared to laugh at him ever again.

"Please help me," Mark spat out with all his strength.

Stephen was familiar with this voice, which had welcomed him warmly when he first came to the factory. This voice has also encouraged and comforted himself again and again at work.

Stephen jumped into the water and held Mark's head. "Man, I'm holding you up, but we have to stay in the water until the ambulance arrives." Stephen knew it would be better for Mark. Five minutes passed, and news of Mark's injury had spread all over the factory. Three more workers came to hear the news, and suddenly one of the workers shouted: "Look, the tar is flowing towards the pond."

Stephen turned his head and saw a river made of asphalt flowing into the pond. The water in the pond was hissing with hot asphalt, and the asphalt floating on the water was drifting towards Stephen and the others in the white mist. Coming, Stephen could feel its heat even when he stood in the water, and he felt extreme fear.

"Get out of here." Stephen shouted and swam with Mark in the opposite direction. There is a dike about 3 meters high on the other side of the pond. When Stephen got under the dike, he supported Mark's legs and pushed him up hard. But Mark's hands, which were tightly wrapped in tar, couldn't grasp the slippery dike at all. The tar was getting closer and closer to them, 2 meters, 1 meter...

"Somebody pull him up!" Stephen shouted to the people on the shore.

When he was pulled up by the people on the shore, Mark felt like he was about to be torn apart, because the skin on his hand was ripped off again.

Stephen also climbed ashore in a panic. He looked at the unrecognizable Mark in front of him and felt very sad.

When Mark left the water, the burning feeling on his body immediately recovered: "Quick, quick, give me some water!" A light utility truck was parked by the pond with a fire sprinkler, which was used by the factory. To deal with sudden tar burns. Stephen hurriedly called the truck, put Mark under the sprinkler, and turned on the switch, but the little water coming out of the water pipe couldn't solve Mark's pain at all.

"Go and open the fire hydrant." A co-worker hurriedly found a fire hose and connected it to the fire hydrant. When a strong column of water hit Mark's body, Mark felt a little less pain, but what followed It was an unbearable cold, and Mark began to shiver uncontrollably. The co-workers found a few more clothes to cover him, and then sprayed water.

His wife and children let him create a miracle of life

At 8:20 a.m., 30 minutes after the furnace exploded, Mark got into an ambulance and was rushed to the local hospital. On the way, Mark thought of his wife Juliet and children. Since Jessica suffered from cerebral palsy two years ago, Juliet has woken up early every day to give her massages and muscle exercises. "If I die, how will their lives be!"

When he arrived at the hospital, Dr. Berwick immediately carefully stripped the tar from the inner elbow of Mark's left arm and gave him an IV infusion. Although Mark's condition was somewhat stable after the infusion, Dr. Berwick recommended that he be transferred to the Royal Sydney Hospital, where conditions were better.

When Juliet was notified and rushed to the hospital, Mark was under general anesthesia and was about to be transported by helicopter.

At 1.45pm, Mark had arrived at the Royal Sydney Hospital, and the nurses used 10 liters of paraffin oil to soften the thick tar on his body. Juliet had been waiting outside the operating room, her mind was in a mess. Juliet fainted when the doctor told her that 80% of Mark's skin was burned. She knew what that number meant to a burn patient and what it meant to his family?

It has been 3 days since Mark was admitted to the hospital and his condition has been in critical condition. Doctors said that with the slightest accident, Mark could die, and of course if he was lucky, he could be out of danger, but he would still have to endure months of pain. Moreover, the condition can deteriorate at any time and be life-threatening.

Juliet sat alone in the hospital chapel, and she had been sitting like this for two hours, praying motionless to God to tell her what to do. Of course she hoped that Mark would survive, but would it be too selfish to let Mark live in extreme pain and face death all the time?

Back in Mark's ward, Juliet stood in front of her bandaged husband, tears streaming down uncontrollably, and she said softly to Mark, "If you can't stand the pain... I agree with you to leave us..." Although Juliet's voice was almost inaudible, in the silent ward, it could be heard very clearly. Mark's mouth wrapped in gauze moved a few times with great effort. Then, the gauze at the corner of his eyes gradually became wet.

In the months that followed, Mark hovered on the line of life and death, and on several occasions doctors thought there was nothing they could do, but Mark miraculously returned. After seven skin grafts, Mark's damaged skin was finally restored.

Everyone thought it was an incredible miracle, but Juliet understood that Mark had created it for her and the children.