I was a human fireball for 20 agonising seconds and feared I’d burn to death… but I refused to give up fighting for life

A man who was almost burned alive in a horrific fire has revealed the incredible moment he was inspired to overcome his trauma and help others.

Spencer Beach, 49, turned into a human fireball when a fire broke out at a house he was working on in Edmonton, Kentucky in the US.

The father was laying the floor when flames ripped through the house, leaving him on fire for 20 agonizing seconds and leaving 90 percent of his body covered in third- and fourth-degree burns.

On the fateful day in April 2003, Spencer had spent several days removing linoleum from a house under construction, reports The safety magazine.

During his third day of call, the technician only had to finish the laundry room and another half of the bathroom. He had considered calling in sick that day, but opted to do the rest of the job.

While on his hands and knees tearing up the linoleum, Spencer suddenly heard a loud whistle and a bang, before a flash fire that quickly spread engulfed the entire house while the technician was still inside.

During a fire, Spencer tried to open the front and back doors, but because the fire sucked in all the oxygen, the handles wouldn’t move.

He ran to the garage and made one last attempt to open the only available door, but it wouldn’t open.

After being set on fire for twenty excruciating seconds, Spencer fell to the ground and fought for his life.

But when the heat and pain disappeared and time stopped, he thought of his wife and unborn child. He mustered the strength to get up and pull open the garage door.

Miraculously, Spencer managed to escape the burning building and survive the flash fire, but not without suffering life-changing injuries and damage to his body.

While in hospital, the then-father learned he had third- and fourth-degree burns on 90 percent of his body — and was told he had a five percent chance of living.

After being in a coma for six weeks and undergoing more than six surgeries, Spencer was completely immobile when he woke up because the scar problem had become deeply ingrained.

Spencer remembers being “100 percent useless” because his lungs were badly burned and steel held all his fingers together.

He had one tube to his stomach to feed him and another tube in his mouth to just breathe – he couldn’t even call for nurses or change the channel on the TV.

Spencer quickly developed depression, followed by anxiety and then hallucinations – before the survivor knew it, he began thinking of ways to commit suicide.

Five months later, Spencer’s wife, Tina, gave birth to their first child, a girl named Amber.

He said: ‘That was the first day I fought the pain just to hold my daughter.

“What happened while I was holding my daughter was the first day I looked outside of myself. That was the first day in five months that I stopped feeling sorry for myself.’

During recovery therapy, Spencer met many people who had been injured on the job, and they exchanged stories about how the incidents occurred.

A common theme emerged in these discussions: ‘poor’ practices and the lack of following PPE and safety guidelines in the workplace.

Spencer said: “They would say, ‘I didn’t think it would happen, I didn’t see it coming, no one told me. I didn’t fill out my forms, I didn’t wear my personal protective equipment, I didn’t notice the danger.”

On the day of the incident, Spencer recalled grabbing the red-hot door handles with his bare hands while his gloves were in his car.

He said, “Those gloves would have helped me hold those handles longer, try a little harder.

“And what if they helped me get out a little faster?” That would have reduced the burns on the rest of my body.”

Now Spencer has turned his “wounds into wisdom” and become a motivational and safety awareness speaker. He made a successful living by touring North America and giving about 100 presentations a year.

Spencer regularly speaks at presentations about what happened to him and encourages employees and employers to learn from his mistakes.

‘If you go to work with a disability, it is in your own hands. You have the choice whether to use your PPE. It is in your hands if you are in a hurry and ignore safety,” he told Safety Magazine.

When Spencer worked at the house in Edmonton 20 years ago, he used a shortcut.

His employer had developed a faster method of removing linoleum, which involves pouring a compact thinner on the floor.

It seeps into the back of the linoleum, reactivates the adhesive and the floor comes loose. It saves both time and money, but it has one disadvantage: it is explosive.

If his employer had required his employees to remove the flooring in the proper, longer manner, Spencer’s tragic incident could have been prevented. But Spencer still partly blames himself and insists he won’t ignore the alarm bells anymore.

He said: ‘I felt like removing the floor with that chemical wasn’t right, but I didn’t listen to my gut feeling. By not listening to myself and doing nothing to control the danger my gut warned me about, I was actually doing nothing to control the risk.”

MailOnline has contacted Spencer’s representative for further comment.

In April 2013, a builder in China survived a horrific accident in which a foot-long metal rod was impaled in his head.

Jin Hongping was working in the city of Linxia in northwest China’s Ganua province when the 40cm rod fell from a height and passed through his skull.