Student Recounts Explosion on Playing Field

Two Santa Clarita teenagers were being treated for severe burns Thursday as a less seriously injured classmate recounted how an improvised cannon used in a high school physics experiment exploded in their faces, searing them in a cloud of flaming alcohol.

Jesse Honea, 17, of Valencia, said he fought desperately to extinguish the flames consuming Christopher James while other students helped Nolan Lemar after the accident Wednesday on the football field at William S. Hart High School in Newhall.

“I knew it had to be a big explosion,” said Jesse, who said he had his back turned as Christopher and Nolan prepared to fire a tennis ball out of the crude cannon, made with soldered-together apple juice cans and using methanol--wood alcohol--as an explosive.

“I just heard a big boom--I could feel it for sure--it was really intensely hot on the back of my neck, and I could see a little bit of orange out of the side of my eye,” Jesse said.

He said he ducked, turned and saw Christopher running in pain, the pale alcohol flames about his head virtually invisible in the sunlight.

“I saw heat rising from his head and occasionally an orange tip,” Jesse said. “They were vapors like you see above a car engine, above the hood.”

“He was . . . screaming and his hair was melting away,” Jesse said. “I saw the heat vapors again, and I just knew he was on fire, so I first ran up to him and took my hands and began to put them on his head--it was just instinct--to put out the flames.”

The flames were all over Christopher and difficult to extinguish, Jesse said, so he ordered his friend to drop and roll on the grass. As Christopher thrashed on the ground, Jesse doffed his sweatshirt and leaped atop him.

“I smothered as many flames as I could on his chest and his stomach and his hands,” Jesse said. “The flames kept popping up all over--there was so much smoke. It was an awful sight.” Jesse ran to a water fountain where he doused his shirt, ran back to Christopher’s side and began dabbing his friend’s smoldering flesh.

“Oh my God, Jesse, help me!” Christopher screamed.

Meanwhile, Jesse said, science teacher Thomas Magee arrived with a fire extinguisher to put out the remaining flames. Jesse said he tried to comfort his friend as they waited for paramedics.

“It was the worst moment of my life,” he said. “I had my head down, I was crying. My emotions just overcame me, and I couldn’t bear to look at him anymore.”

Jesse was treated for superficial burns at Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital in Valencia and released.

Christopher, 17, of Stevenson Ranch was listed in critical condition Thursday at the Grossman Burn Center at Sherman Oaks Hospital with third- and second-degree burns over 50% of his body--on his face, neck, chest, hands and arms. His larynx and lungs were also scorched by the blast. He was heavily sedated and hooked to a ventilator and feeding tube, hospital administrators said, saying his condition might have been even worse if not for Jesse’s actions to put out the flames.

Nolan, 17, of Castaic, was listed in good condition, with second- and third-degree burns on 12% of his body.

Christopher and Nolan are scheduled for surgery Saturday, when doctors will strip away charred and infected flesh and replace it with skin grafts, hospital administrators said.

The experiment firing tennis balls from the alcohol cannon was meant to teach the students a physics lesson about velocity, Jesse said.

The science teacher, Magee, has been unavailable since the explosion and could not be located Thursday.

Jesse said he had turned his back and could not see precisely, but he thought that Magee was about 10 yards from the knot of students where the cannon exploded.

Other students have described how the 35 teenagers in the physics class had split up into two groups on the football field, holding the cannons in their hands as they took turns igniting the fuel with matches.

But Jesse said only one group at a time was actually firing a cannon, the one that exploded as Christopher held it, while Nolan held the bottle of alcohol fuel.

The juice cans were soldered together with a metal disc between them, perforated by button-sized holes, sheriff’s deputies said. Alcohol in the lower can was ignited through a hole in the bottom of the can, exploding through the holes into the upper chamber where the tennis ball projectile was lodged.

Students were disappointed at how little distance the balls flew, and were adding more and more fuel to the lower can in an effort to hurl it farther when the cannon exploded, other students said.

The incident is being investigated by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s and Fire departments.

A Hart school district official described the alcohol cannon firing as a common school physics demonstration, but university-level science teachers have questioned the point of the experiment. They and sheriff’s investigators also questioned the use of alcohol as a fuel, citing the dangers from its virtually invisible flames.