‘Fire Challenge’ Leaves Girl, 12, With Burns Over Half Her Body

A 12-year-old Michigan girl was sent to the hospital on Aug. 17 for burns she sustained while taking part in the so-called “fire challenge.”

Timiyah Landers became engulfed in flames while she and her friends were imitating a video they saw on YouTube, her mother told Fox2 in Detroit.

Brandi Owens, her mother, stated that she heard an explosion and saw her daughter “running up [a] hallway on fire from her knees to her hair,” the report said. Owens’s fiancee took the girl to the bathtub and sprayed her with water.

Then, Timiyah was sent to the hospital, and her family said that nearly 50 percent of her body was burned.

“I was hysterical,” Owens told the Detroit News. “We’re driving to (Children’s Hospital). She’s the one burning, and she’s trying to calm me down,” and she was apologizing as she cried through the pain.

Friends of the girl said they were doing the “fire challenge,” which involves people applying flammable liquids to their body before setting them on fire while a video is being recorded.

Owens told the Detroit News that she is considering legal action against YouTube, where her daughter found the “fire challenge” video. “Even though it was her decision to do it,” Owens told the paper that she wants YouTube to pull the videos down.

Owens said that parents need to watch what their children are viewing online.

“These kids are trying these YouTube challenges,” Owens told Fox2. “Monitor these kids, especially with these phones and if I could after with this happening, my kids would never be able to be on social media—no more iPhones, nothing.”

Not the First

Timiyah isn’t the first to be injured in the foolish challenge.

The “fire challenge” dates back to at least 2012 as one of the first fire challenge videos uploaded to YouTube called “fire challenge” was uploaded April 5, 2012, showing a person lighting his chest hair on fire.

In July 2014, a 15-year-old in Kentucky received second-degree burns after attempting the fire challenge, and a month later, a 16-year-old in California lit himself on fire after pouring nail polish remover on himself, the Washington Post noted.

“Being burned alive was one of the worst things you can imagine,” the California teen told KABC. “It’s my fault. I can’t say nothing else besides it was a dumb idea.”

“When they look on YouTube, they see, ‘Oh okay, wow, I want to try that, the outcome with him was okay,’ ” Owens told the Post of the teens’ motivation to do it. “Some kids know their right from their wrong, but they can still be curious to try something, to say that they tried it.”

In July 2018, a 15-year-old teen suffered second-degree burns to his face and body after his friends apparently poured boiling water on him while he was sleeping as part of the “Hot Water Challenge.”

“My skin just fell off my chest, and then I looked in the mirror and I had skin falling off here and, on my face,” Kyland Clark, of Indianapolis, told Fox59 at the time. Clark was hospitalized for a week.

“If your friends are telling you to do this, they aren’t good friends,” Dr. Ed Bartkus, of Indiana University Health, said to the news outlet.