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Following a fire in a welding class at a school in the Ontario School District in February 2025, an Oregon teenager was awarded a $20 million settlement earlier this year after her clothes caught on fire.
The girl, who suffered third-degree burns on 30% of her body- mostly on her arms, chest, and back- when her clothes caught fire in welding class when she was 15, was using a plasma-cutting torch. This metal-cutting tool can reach tens of thousands of degrees Fahrenheit.
Court documents indicate that the school’s welding protective equipment, including a flame-retardant jacket, was tattered to the point of being unusable.
Yet, students were instructed to operate the torch anyway. The teen was not wearing protective gear.
After sparks from the tool set her clothes ablaze, she ran outside and rolled in the snow, trying to put the flames out, and was later airlifted to a nearby hospital before being transferred to a burn unit, where she received treatments, including skin grafts, for several months.
The settlement covers about $14 million in past and future medical treatments, with the balance being damages for “pain and suffering.”
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