One of eight Kodiak teenagers severely injured in an explosion on a local beach is talking about the aftermath, as well as her hopes and worries about her recovery.
“I thought I died, because, just, that’s all I saw,” Cassandra Canaveral said in an interview from her hospital bed. She was among the five victims medevaced after the Nov. 10 blast, caused by a fuel drum thrown into a bonfire. “All I saw was light for a couple seconds, and then the fire got extinguished.”
Cassandra was about a week from her 17th birthday, at a bonfire in the middle of a stormy weekend, when the explosion on White Sands Beach sent her to a hospital in Anchorage. She was still there being treated last week when she discussed the incident.
Cassandra said she noticed her head and facial injuries first.
“I started feeling my hair and I could pull out some chunks, and I was like, ‘I got burned bad,’” she said. “So I looked for my friends and I was kind of just – I remember what I was saying the whole time. I was just talking like, ‘I got burned.’”
Her friends tried to reassure her as they poured cold water on her face as a sort of first aid, but she knew she needed to see a doctor. Her brother called their parents. Gustavo Canaveral, their father, agreed.
“I met her at the hospital and then I just learned from what she and my son told me – that the kid threw the barrel into the fire and exploded,” he said.
It was a harrowing reunion.
“She said, ‘Papi, I got burned,’ and I’m thinking like, ‘Yeah, you sure did,’” Gustavo recalled. “It was like the blisters on the skin was sort of like, melting off her face, and her hands were just bloody and black. It was pretty shocking and frightening.”
Cassandra was glad to see him though.
“I had a small wave of relief then because it was like, OK. It was kind of grounding to (be) seeing my dad there and being like ‘OK, I’m going to get through this,’” she said.
And she did. Or at least, she’s still getting through it.
By the time she comes home, Cassandra will have spent about two weeks in the hospital. Some of her peers might be there longer. Their injuries have spurred an outpouring of support from the community. But recovering from the explosion – physically and emotionally – will take time.
Scott Ellis is the chief of the Bayside Fire Department. He was the first emergency responder on the scene. The initial call was for an uncontrolled fire. Then he heard that several children were injured. But when he got there, all the teenagers had left.
Ellis and his team found the metal barrel about 10 feet away from the still-burning fire, and the area smelled of fuel. He said he’s glad the barrel didn’t rupture, or injuries could have been much worse.
“That would have been catastrophic,” he said. “You would have had the metal of an everyday 55-gallon metal barrel fracturing catastrophically and moving at very high speeds in multiple directions, shrapnel everywhere.”
He said he hopes people will pay more attention to fire safety now.
Alaska State Troopers have said an unnamed suspect who allegedly threw the fuel drum was taken into custody and held by the state Division of Juvenile Justice.
The explosion shook the Kodiak community, but people didn’t just reel – they organized. At least six GoFundMe pages were set up, and nearly all of them hit their goals right away. Some even doubled their original asks, including the one for Cassandra’s family. Other victims who solicited donations included Alexia Cobban, Mia Vasquez, Brian Dierich, and Kavik Wolfe. The only page that hasn’t hit its goal is for a victim who wanted to be anonymous.
One community member, Chislyn Hoen, even set up an account at a local Credit Union 1 branch for donations, to avoid GoFundMe’s fees. That money is expected to be split evenly among the affected families.
Artists and businesses are supporting the victims, too. Robert Wagner auctioned off a painting, while Highmark Marine and Outdoor Kodiak are hosting a drive-in movie and paintballing as fundraisers.
The support has helped give Cassandra hope.
“I feel so blessed and lucky to have such a tight-knit community,” she said. “For a wide majority of people I see everyday come together and be so willing to give so much money to people they don’t even know.”
Her father said he’s grateful, too – he’s not sure if their insurance will cover the emergency flight.
Teachers and school administrators have already begun preparing for Cassandra and her peers to return. The school district’s superintendent, Cyndy Mika, said there’s already a policy for it called a medical 504 – a sort of specialized education plan to help kids with specific needs.
“If the burns are to the hands, they probably won’t be able to use their hands for a while. So schoolwork is going to look different for them, right?” Mika said. “So that’s what we will be working individually with each family: to come up with plans to meet the needs of their students.”
The district is also prepared for the mental health impacts – it increased its counseling services after the explosion, and the superintendent acknowledged it might be a while to heal what she called “hidden injuries.”
Cassandra said she knows things will be different when she comes back. She still wants to play basketball, but she won’t be as competitive as she had hoped. And her teachers and friends all know why she’s been away.
She just hopes things don’t change too much.
“I am looking forward to seeing everybody again,” she said. “I hope that my recovery is kind of at a good point, to where people aren’t going to be shocked when they see me. Because I don’t want my appearance to change the way people treat me.”
She also knows that she’s probably changed, too.
“My biggest takeaway that’s always going through my mind is valuing life,” she said. “It was just so crazy how quickly my life just could have been gone, and I didn’t realize how much I cherished my life until I was just sitting in the car, realizing that I almost, fully, could have died.”
Cassandra was hoping to be discharged from the hospital and back in Kodiak soon.