Leo Gillick
Kids have always tried to emulate the things they see, be it TV, online, or in the school yard, and it’s often a cause of problems. One Texas boy has ended up in the hospital after setting himself on fire while trying a TikTok challenge.
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The Challenge: Setting fire to some rubbing alcohol inside a bottle creates a cool flame inside. It rests there, burning. It’s a simple science experiment, but, like most fire and chemical experiments, it should be done under the watchful eye of an adult.
What Went Wrong: The two boys managed to get the first part of the TikTok challenge right. They put a small amount of rubbing alcohol in a bottle and set it alight.
- “You basically take some rubbing alcohol and you put it into a bottle, and then you light it on fire, and the fire shoots up the bottle. I did that. My brother and I did that, and it was cool,” the younger brother said.
But when they tried to get rid of the bottle, after finishing the TikTok challenge, the Texas boys made a mistake. “It looked like the fire had gone out. So, my brother grabbed and said, ‘Here, throw it away.’ So, I grabbed it to throw it in the trash can, but my shirt was on fire.”
Disastrous Consequences
The bottle still contained flammable liquid, and as he threw it away, the burning alcohol splashed all over his brother. He was now covered in flames, and his clothing was burning. Panicked, he didn’t know what to do. But his brother came to his rescue.
A neighbor heard the commotion and knew something was really wrong when one of the Texas boys called 911. She came to their yard to find one of the boys severely burnt, with the other calling the emergency services.
- When I walked up to the porch, he was just face, chest, arms, and stomach covered in burns. It looked like his skin had been melted away,” Christina told KXAN. “They like to listen to the story times on TikTok, you know, the Reddit stories. So I never expected things to go the way they went.”
The TikTok challenge had burned one of the Texas boys badly. But thanks to his brother’s quick thinking, the burns weren’t fatal. He pulled off his brother’s clothes and made him drop and roll. He’s now making a recovery in the hospital, having learned a painful lesson.
