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what I do remember is the fire just exploding
August 19, 2015, the start of the Twisp River Fire in Okanagon County.
Winds shift so quickly – in just 15 minutes, it doubles in size.
25-year old firefighter Daniel Lyon and three others, trapped – blinded by smoke.
Their engine runs off the road. Daniel must run through the fire.
and are there flames all around you at this point?
I mean just fully engulfed in flames for probably 50 percent of the run getting out of there
He got out.
Most of him.
As some of them said, my skin was dripping off me
The burns were torturous. Surviving was just the start.
I do remember having a conversation with god, saying, if I don’t wake up tomorrow, I’ll be fine with that.
But God had other plans.
Including the mistake that saved his life.
it just changed everything going forward in that moment.
SUCCESS IS MESSY. AND THIS IS WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE.I’M MONIQUE MING LAVEN, AND THIS IS A PODCAST ABOUT REALLY SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE AND THEIR MISTAKES – SETBACKS – SCREWUPS—
BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT MAKES YOU SMARTER AND STRONGER.
YOU HAVE TO KEEP TAKING YOUR BEST SHOT AGAIN AND AGAIN, AND IT IS GOING TO BE …
“HIT AND MISS”.
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BEING A BROADCAST JOURNALIST MEANS REPORTING ON DEVASTATING TRAGEDIES DAILY – OFTEN HOURLY—AND SADLY, SOMETIMES, BY THE MINUTE.
YOU STRIKE A PRECARIOUS BALANCE TO KEEP YOUR HUMANITY AFLOAT. SOMETIMES EMPATHY IS YOUR LIFESAVER – OTHER TIMES THE WEIGHT OF IT THREATENS TO DRAG YOU UNDER.
THEN YOU HAVE A TRAGEDY – AND SUCCESS STORY – LIKE DANIEL LYON.
HIS STORY IS SO FILLED WITH STRUGGLE AND PAIN, THAT THE TRIUMPH IS BAFFLING. SO IS HIS JOY.
[BRING MUSIC UP QUICKLY TO BREAK UP]
THE TWISP RIVER FIRE WAS ONE OF FIVE FIRES CAUSED BY LIGHTNING STRIKES IN AUGUST 2015. OVER THE NEXT MONTH, FLAMES WOULD ROAR THROUGH 520-THOUSAND ACRES.
MORE THAN 13-HUNDRED-50 FIREFIGHTERS WERE DEPLOYED. DANIEL WAS ONE OF THE EARLIEST … IN ENGINE NO. 642, ALONG WITH THREE OTHER MEN.
ONLY DANIEL LIVED TO TELL WHAT HAPPENED.
BUT THERE WAS A WAIT.
FOR QUITE A LONG TIME, ALL WE SAW WERE HIS PARENTS:
UNCERTAIN BUT UNWAVERING,
BY HIS SIDE IN THE HARBORVIEW MEDICAL CENTER BURN UNIT EVERY DAY.
WAITING FOR HIM TO COME OUT OF A COMA.
Monique did you wake up out of your coma with memory of what happened?
Daniel Oh, yeah. Yeah//
I remember everything up and to the point that I was in the ambulance and they, basically put me up, put me out. And then that’s that’s where it all went black. And then I woke up about, about exactly a month later.
Monique Can we go there? About what? You remember?
Daniel Oh, yeah. Okay.
What I do remember is, is the fire just, exploding and us trying to get out of there as quickly as possible. Our engine ended up crashing, and, I had to take off on foot from there. And that’s how I got burned so badly. So I ran through, quite a bit of the fire to get back to, our safety zone.
Monique Wow. So your engine crashed, and that was, in the fire, is that correct?
Daniel That’s correct. Yeah.
Monique How far did you have to run?
Daniel I remember having to crawl. I mean, literally up of probably a 45 degree embankment. That’s why my fingers got, my my hands got so much in bad shape that they amputate those fingers because I was literally clawing up the this hillside that there was, you know, on fire.//
FIRE BURNED HIS FINGERS.
SMOKE BLINDED HIS EYES.
HE GOT TO THE TOP OF THE EMBANKMENT, BUT NOT TO THE END OF THE FLAMES.
HE HAD TO RUN – HOW FAR, HE’S NOT CERTAIN. JUST THAT THERE WERE SWITCHBACKS.
Monique And are there flames all around you at this point?
Daniel Yes. So. So it was, I mean, just fully engulfed in flames in for probably 50% of the run getting out of there. And then finally I got to a point where I just broke out of the flame. There was wasn’t smoke. There wasn’t a lot of smoke. There wasn’t the flame. It was just like a wall. And, I looked back, hoping those guys were right on my heels behind me, but they weren’t. And then I got down to the bottom of the hillside, crossed the pavement to the other side of the road. And look back, you know, just the everything was on fire.
So once I broke out of that fire, I was able to luckily, immediately get some medical help.
HE COULDN’T FIND THE OTHER MEN IN HIS ENGINE- NO ONE WOULD EVER SEE THEM AGAIN.
BUT OTHER CREWS RUSHED TO HIM.
THEY GAVE HIM BOTH HELP- AND AN OMINOUS WARNING.
I remember there was a fire engine that was parked close by, and I went to go run up to the mirror to see what my face looked like. And one of the other firefighters immediately grabbed my arm, said, you can’t do that. Don’t do that right now. And that’s when it hit me that this is really bad.
HE DID LOOK DOWN AT HIS HANDS.
if I remember correctly, they were like white. They were like bleached white. They weren’t like a black. And like, you’d think of somebody just running through a fire. But when he said, you can’t look at your face, that really freaked me out. And then I remember it was about 97 degrees that day. It really hot out, and I just ran through fire, and I started getting really cold, and I knew shock was starting to set in. So things started going through my head of. I can’t say that that death crossed my mind. But the fear, definitely a fear of, what’s my life going to be here in the next few days?
Monique Did you think you were going to make it?
Daniel I. Oh, I knew it was bad.
Because, as some of them said, my skin was, like, dripping off of me. At this point, I a lot of people ask, well, how do you get burned so bad when you’re wearing all that fire gear? But what a lot of people don’t realize is when you’re a wildland firefighter, you’re wearing a fairly thin layer of Nomex,
I was put on that ambulance, and, I was probably in that ambulance for five, ten minutes and just in brutal agony, just begging for them to give me any kind of painkiller they could. And they were. And I remember asking to pray for me, and they did their thing. There’s three of them in that medic unit. And then, and then they said this hopefully help. And then it all kind of went to sleep from there.
Monique So you’re an incredible pain in the ambulance, and you do eventually, lose consciousness. And then the next time that you regained consciousness. Was that a month later?
Daniel it was more like coming slowly over the next week or two, slowly coming back to, life. And then I’d say two weeks later is when I really started comprehending what was going on, the situation that I was in, hearing about what happened.
ALL THREE MEN IN HIS FIRE ENGINE HAD DIED … Richard Wheeler, Tom Zbyszewski, and Andrew Zajac.
AND THE FLAMES CONTINUED ADVANCING THE ENTIRE TIME DANIEL WAS IN A COMA.
520-THOUSAND ACRES BURNED. ABOUT 200 HOMES LOST.
DANIEL LEARNED THIS AS HE WAS FILLED WITH PAIN, COVERED IN BANDAGES.
So just a huge amount to grasp. And then. And then you look down there, I look down my own body, and, I couldn’t see most of it, or really any of it, because I was essentially a mummy. At this point, I’m just completely bandaged up, but you’re just wondering what the heck is under those bandages? And then you get to a point where, they do one of your first dressing changes where you realize you’re actually awake and have to realize what’s going on, and just you kind of feel like your world just got destroyed, right?
Monique You’re talking about the sight of it. But you must have you must have been in incredible pain, too.
Daniel Yeah, I do remember being in extreme amount of pain. It’s it’s interesting because, you know, the, the, the drugs that they’re able to give you, thankfully, are able to help cut the pain, but they don’t eliminate it, that’s for sure.
they would load you up and on as much painkillers as they could. high octane painkillers. And and it helped but it just it took the edge off. That’s it. With the best way I can describe is you’re to have having a migraine and you take a single Tylenol. And it helps but definitely doesn’t eliminate it.
Monique Wow. Did they like that first firefighter that you came across when you ran for your life? Did the people in the hospital tell you, wait before you look.
Daniel I do remember just that the first time seeing. I think the first thing that I saw was my hands, if I remember correctly, because my, my tips or the or I guess the lack of my fingertips, the just the, the first part of the amputation was sticking out of the guards. And that was the first part that I had seen. And that was that was pretty scary.
I mean, that’s horrific. And so you can only imagine, I’m thinking in that moment what the rest of my body must look like. ///11618 Are they gonna have to amputate more things down the road? Is this as bad as it’s going to get? It’s going to get worse. It just it. Yeah. A whirlwind of thoughts are going through your mind.
Monique So you start by just seeing your fingertip. When did you look at your. You were burned over 70% of your body. Is that correct?
Daniel Yeah. Just about 60, 65 to 70% of my body is burned up. Yep.
Monique How did you approach looking at yourself? How did you decide when you were going to do it?
Daniel my everything was a mess. Being that 70% or 65 to 70% of your body is one giant open wound at this point. They’ll they’ll graft something on you and then, it, you know, things start to turn colors you’ve never seen before. And it’s just it’s probably the most graphic injury that you could deal with, but. Yeah, I so I was just forced to see my arms and my legs when they would take the bandages off. And, and I feel like back then it just, it was what it was. But the first time I saw my face in the mirror, that’s when I broke down. Because my, my face got so, so badly burned. And seeing it, completely unwrapped and just the way it the way it was so raw in that moment, I broke down because I thought, I’ll never I’ll never get married. I’ll never have any chance of a love life. I remember, and, that was the absolute hardest part of that right there was the thought of my future being just gone.
“WHO COULD LOVE THIS FACE?” HE THOUGHT. HE WAS JUST 25 YEARS OLD.
MEANWHILE, HIS FAMILY HAD RELEASED A PICTURE OF HIM TO THE MEDIA, TAKEN SHORTLY AFTER HE TRAINED TO BECOME A WILDLAND FIREFIGHTER.
HE HAS A HANDSOME, EXPRESSIVE FACE …
WEARING A METHOW VALLEY FIRE HAT, AN UNTESTED YELLOW NOMEX SHIRT…
HIS FULLY INTACT FINGER POINTING TO SMOKE [FROM A FIRE IN THE MOUNTAINS, FAR AWAY.]
HE’S SMILING, EXCITED TO MEET HIS NEW CALLING.
HE’D NEVER LOOK LIKE THAT AGAIN.
MISERY LOVES COMPANY. HE HAD A LOT OF IT IN THE BURN UNIT.
Monique
I mean, surviving the original incredible Wounds was just the beginning of it. Yes. How did you approach recovery? How did you get from, you know, getting new dressings every day? How did you deal with that on a day to day basis?
Daniel the doctors always wanted you to walk each night and each day whenever you could. They they really- at a certain point during your recovery. They want you to start walking. So I would just walk the unit floor. And by doing that you’re passing you’re doing laps up there and you meet, other burn survivors. And it’s an interesting thing. Walking by somebody who’s, equally as bandaged up as you are or maybe slightly less or even slightly more, and you both kind of stop and you say, what the heck happened to you? And obviously we’re here for the same reason. We both we both got burned up, but it’s probably for a totally different reason. And, getting to meet the people that I did that gave me hope and hope. They gave them hope. And, we all helped each other. And that is really, what got me through a lot of that. Just just knowing that you weren’t alone. 1 21 33
Monique You are clearly a positive person and a strong person. Clearly. I mean, I hope never to understand fully the depths of your strength and perseverance. But along the way, did you make any mistakes about, how to recuperate, how to get through this?
Daniel it was so, so, so painful to walk, but it was crucial. I didn’t see it at the time, but the doctors ensured that it was crucial that I walked on my own. And if you’re going to fight the scarring, that’s one way to do is get moving. And I remember I’d walk past several rooms that had, electric mobility, like wheelchairs out in front of their rooms.
I mean, it seemed like the hall was five miles long, is probably 100ft long, and it would take me forever to get down there, but probably after a week or two of walking past those rooms with the wheelchairs in front of them, I remember I snapped at the nurse and I really got upset with her. I said, it is absolute garbage that all these folks get to use a wheelchair and I don’t? I said, you’re making me walk. I said, it hurts like heck. I said, I want a wheelchair if if I’m going to be doing this anymore. And I remember her looking at me and said, Danny, you got to realize those people only have those wheelchairs in front of the rooms because there’s a good chance that they’re never going to walk again. She says as much as it hurts right now, she says their injuries are a lot different than yours. And she says as much as it might hurt right now, you’re still able to walk, and it might be slow and it might be painful, but you’re still doing it with your own two legs. And she said, those folks with those chairs might not get that chance again. And that man, I felt so bad in that moment because the mistake I made was making an assumption, essentially. And. And telling these nurses who are. You have dedicated their life to helping people like me. And I’m snapping at them because, you know, part of it was just because of the pain that I’m in, you know?
Monique Sure.
Daniel it is always a regret that I have. But it was probably the biggest learning lesson in that moment. And it was very early on. And I can pretty much truly say that from that point on, I never made another complaint.
Monique Really?
Daniel Yeah.
Monique You would have been allowed, and I’m sure they even forgave you in the moment for any temper that you lost.
Daniel That was obviously a huge mistake. And in that moment I feel bad for it. But the perspective that it gave me and the lesson that it taught me it, that became a mistake, that I think I’ve put a positive spin on it, and it really helped me. It, it just it changed everything going forward in that moment.
Daniel I hope, I hope that to this day that that nurse forgives me. Yeah.
THAT HALL MAY HAVE FELT FIVE MILES LONG. BUT THE JOURNEY WAS JUST GETTING STARTED.
HE WAS IN THE HOSPITAL FOR THREE MONTHS. EXCRUCIATING REHAB … SKIN GRAFTS … SURGERY AFTER SURGERY THAT CONTINUED LONG AFTER RELEASE... MORE THAN 100 OF THEM.
IT WAS GRINDING.
PUSHING THE LIMITS OF WHAT ANYONE COULD SURVIVE PHYSICALLY, MENTALLY, EMOTIONALLY.
Monique Did you experience, any anger?
Daniel Oh, yeah.
I was probably my only emotion I had. I cried all the tears that I could have. There, it felt like there was nothing more to cry. And I feel like anger is. It was it was a it was the wrong way for me to cope with it. But it was. It simply was is what it is.
Monique Did you not want to talk about it for a while?
Daniel I’d be coming almost directly out of, wound care and where I’m just in excruciating pain and relieving therapy at Harborview, and I’d have to go to a meeting room in the hospital and meet with some investigator that I’ve never met before in my life, and tell him every nitty gritty detail in that, it was so fresh and so dark in that time. He just made me clam up and not want to talk at all.
Monique And so for a while, you just said, I’m done with this.
Daniel Yes, absolutely.
Monique Oh, when you said the darkest part, what was the darkest part?
Daniel Darkest part was. Leaving the hospital. Believe it or not, I remember early on I want to get out of the hospital as as bad as I could, but then by. By that second month, you start getting used to it. Even though it’s almost like, what I imagine, like being in a prison, you’re just trapped in this place and you can’t go outside. But then I finally got released and got to go home, and, and home for me was then going to be Montana, which was where my parents lived. And I had to move back in with them.
AND THAT BECAME A DIFFERENT KIND OF PRISON.
HE IS THE FIRST TO CREDIT HIS PARENTS – THEIR INCREDIBLE LOVE AND DEVOTION -- WITH GETTING HIM THROUGH.
BUT HE WAS 25. HE WAS NATURALLY ADVENTUROUS, SELF-RELIANT. HE NEVER INTENDED TO BE LIVING WITH THEM AGAIN, DEPENDENT.
AND EVERY NIGHT, HE’D HAVE TO BECOME A MUMMY AGAIN.
NOT WRAPPED IN GAUZE THIS TIME, BUT ENCASED IN HARD PLASTIC…
ON HIS ARMS, HIS FACE, HIS KNEES…
SPLINTS, TO PREVENT HIS TISSUE FROM HARDENING.
And so you can’t move. You’re completely stiff. And so you had to sleep with those on throughout the night. And I remember laying on my back one night and, just wearing those splints, staring up at the ceiling at my parents house, thinking, this is this is absolute hell. This is never how I pictured my life. Yeah. This is not what I want for my life. And I, I can honestly say I’ve never, ever, contemplated, suicide. But in that moment, I do remember having a conversation with God saying, if if I don’t wake up tomorrow, I’ll be fine with that. I won’t take my own life. But if if powers of above don’t have me waking up tomorrow, I will be fine with that.
Monique Because I’m kind of asking him if he would.
Daniel Sure. Yep. Wow. Wow. Yeah. So that was that was definitely the lowest, darkest point in my life. Yeah, yeah.
BUT MAYBE IT WAS GOD THAT REMINDED HIM OF THOSE MOTORIZED WHEELCHAIRS IN THE BURN UNIT. THE ONES DANIEL SO BADLY WANTED TO USE- BUT WAS LUCKY NOT TO NEED.
HE ALREADY KNEW MISERY LOVES COMPANY.
BUT HE SOON LEARNED HEALING DOES TOO.
the only thing that got rid of the anger was finally starting to do, things like motivational speaking and speaking to other burn survivors and firefighters and in law enforcement officers about my experiences. I know a lot of guys and gals. They keep it cooped up inside and for a long while I did. And that’s what I think led to a lot of anger.
when I could start having the opportunity to to speak to other burns survivors of how to get through this, that’s where I was really starting it. It kind of snowballed and started getting better quicker.
QUICK IS A RELATIVE TERM.
Daniel my, my goals never went away. I always had the same goals before the fire as I did after the fire. And but the the timeline for them drastically changed.
I usually have a surgery once every three months, and, to either fix my hands or do another graft or, some plastic surgery, and you’d go in for a surgery. And what they did the surgery, becomes infected, and it has to be redone or, or they do the surgery, and it scars so bad that, you know, I have to have lasering done to it. And so a lot of times it it was like two steps forward and then two steps back, you felt like you’re right back to where you were.
Monique You said that your goals are the same now as they were before the fire
Daniel for example, I always want to climb Mount Rainier. All my life growing up in Puyallup., I always saw it out my window. Yeah. And so, I made sure that was one of the first goals I accomplished.
Monique That’s amazing.
Daniel Ended up summitting Rainier. And so I got checked off the list. And then. But from before I ever started firefighting, you know, I wanted to be a police officer. Went back through the academy and went back to being a police officer for a while.
Daniel getting back to running, getting back to enjoying all the things that I used to do kayaking and, and, like, what I’m doing now, traveling. There’s a point. I couldn’ even drive a car. And now, now we I drive our RV all over the country. So it’s a little things like that where, those goals never changed. They just took a lot longer to to get to the point where I achieved them.
Monique And you were talking earlier about your belief in your fear that you would never be able to fall in love and get married. And look at you now.
Daniel Yeah. I’m pretty, pretty excited about it.
MEGAN IS HER NAME.
HE THOUGHT NO ONE WOULD EVER LOVE HIM. SHE PROVED HIM WRONG
THEY HAD BEEN ON A COUPLE DATES BEFORE THE FIRE.
BUT THEY REALLY FELL IN LOVE DURING HIS RECOVERY.
AND THEY WERE MARRIED THIS SUMMER.
Monique Fantastic. Yeah. Can you tell me your engagement story?
Daniel So. Well, I couldn’t make it a easy engagement for her. Of course, I had to drag her to the top of mountain and. And propose at the highest peak in Hells Canyon. So for many of our our summers, we spent in Hells Canyon on the Oregon Idaho border. And it was it was a place we always loved and just a great place to relax. so literally we got in a raft, we rode across, Brownlee Reservoir and spent probably, what, four, 4 or 5 hours hiking and finally got to the top of that peak and, and proposed up top. And it was one of the coolest days of my life.
QUITE A PEAK.
BUT THERE ARE STILL VALLEYS. THERE ALWAYS WILL BE.
IT SHIFTS WITH THE AMOUNT OF ACTIVITY HE DOES.
HIS INJURIES MEAN MORE MUSCLE SORENESS. ARTHRITIS WILL BECOME A FACTOR.
AND THE EXERCISE HE LOVES KEEPS HIS SKIN MORE ELASTIC..
BUT IT ALSO CAUSES STRETCHING THAT HURTS.
TWO SIDES TO THE COIN, AND EACH DAY IS A NEW FLIP.
BUT HE’S AT PEACE WITH CHANCE.
Monique Talking about being a risk taker. You were your whole life before that. Did you ever feel like you took it too far?
Daniel I don’t know. I don’t think so. Because all, all life involves risk. And obviously some things take a lot more risk than others.
jobs like the military police, fire, those are all jobs that we need or what keeps the world running? It keeps the world safe and and helping other people. There’s no reason that that somebody else should have to do that job and take on that risk in out myself. And so, you know, in a heartbeat, I’d. I’d do it all over again.
Monique Everything that you say makes sense, and it’s brave. Did it take you something to get to that point?
Daniel I’m just blown away by the beauty of of the things I get to see now. And, and people that all enjoy it with it, sometimes they’ll be like, well, yeah, that’s beautiful, that’s neat. And I’m just like blown away. And that is because of the expanded perspective that I’ve had now.
realizing how short life is and really understanding how I went to live it out and how to appreciate every moment. And I hopefully have, you know, decades left in front of me to go. But at 25, I get to learn that perspective that most people don’t learn till it’s too late. I am so grateful for that. And I get to live a life where I’m truly, truly, like, high on life every single day.
AFTER DANIEL ESCAPED THE FLAMES NINE YEARS AGO,
ANOTHER FIREFIGHTER BLOCKED HIM FROM A MIRROR…
MERCIFULLY DELAYING HIS TRUTH.
BUT NOW, DANIEL CAN LOOK IT IN THE FACE.
AND IT’S BEAUTIFUL.
Monique When you look at yourself in the mirror. Now, what do you see?
Daniel I see a person that that has a heck of a lot of stories to tell and has really stories written all over them. People have asked me a lot of times, would you ever get tattoos? And I’d say, yeah, maybe my arms are like are covered in tattoos. These are tattoos that were, you know, given to me by just life. And so, when I look in the mirror, I think of somebody that has a lot of stories to share and, and and and making it my goal to help share some of those stories because I, I do think, or at least I hope, that some of my outlooks will help somebody else.
Daniel I appreciate you give me a platform to share the story and ask some great questions and and enjoy talking with you.
Monique Believe me, the joy was all mine. Thank you so much.
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