In 1992, a brutal kerosene accident scorched 73% of Terry McCarty’s skin. He spent the following year recovering in the hospital

Editor’s Note: Warning that this article contains graphic images that may be disturbing to some readers.

Terry McCarty has a distinct memory from age 6, but to this day, he doesn’t actually know whether it really happened or if he hallucinated it. He’ll never truly find a way to verify the moment, but he is and will be forever impacted by what he saw.

It was 1992, and the kid was lying on the sidewalk, smothered under the weight of a sleeping bag that a neighbor had thrown over his head to put out the flames. The fire had engulfed McCarty, scorching 73% of his body, leaving him with scars that would last an entire lifetime to come. The sleeping bag did little to save his skin, but it did save his life.

When his neighbor plunged the fabric over McCarty’s head, he figured it was all over: the fire, his place in the Nevada neighborhood where he was growing up, his whole life.

Terry McCarty as a child.Terry McCarty

He believed he was dead, “lights out and I guess good show folks,” McCarty, now 39, recalls to PEOPLE. On the other side of that darkness, McCarty didn’t expect to find his father or his two older brothers. Ryan and Jason, then respectively 10 and 12, had just watched their little sibling catch on fire, an unfathomable result of the elder two literally playing with fire.

His brothers’ experiment with kerosene went awry, leaving McCarty’s skin 73% burned

Ryan and Jason found a can of kerosene and poured it into a dog bowl. They were too busy trying to light it on fire to notice McCarty around the corner, coming to bring the kids home per their dad’s request. Fascinated by the experiment, McCarty watched on quietly, unnoticed by his brothers. They didn’t see him when the bowl lit up, startling them. In a panic, one of the boys kicked the bowl, and it hit their younger brother directly in the chest.

“It wrapped around me like a wet blanket with all the flaming kerosene,” McCarty explains decades later. It took him a beat to figure out what was happening — and that it was happening to him. “I thought everything around me was on fire. I didn’t realize I was the one on fire,” he adds.

If gasoline is akin to water, kerosene is closer to a “gelatinous-style fuel,” McCarty notes. “So it took a few seconds for the fire to actually burn through the kerosene layer and then get to my skin … That’s when the realization really kicked in that something was very wrong.”

The searing pain and “chaos” in his brain during that moment were unforgettable, but it wasn’t until quite recently that McCarty remembered the sound. The fire was “deafening,” he tells PEOPLE. “Imagine you’re next to a bonfire, with the loud roaring you hear of a bonfire. Now, try and just place yourself in the center of that.”

Terry McCarty as a child in the hospital.Terry McCarty

He panicked, then his school lessons kicked in: stop, drop and roll, though that technique doesn’t apply as effectively with kerosene. It’s a hard fuel to extinguish, even when one isn’t completely drenched in it. Rolling around on the ground was essentially useless, but it was all McCarty could do.

Then the brothers’ neighbor swooped in with a sleeping bag that was fortunately still in his car after a recent camping trip. He tackled McCarty, quieting the flames and, for a few seconds, quieting everything for the child.

“I thought, ‘Well, I must be dead now because everything is dark,’” he remembers. But then McCarty’s head peeked out from under the fabric, and he saw his neighbor running across a nearby dirt lot that separated their street from the local fire station. McCarty could see the man pounding on the doors and windows, and the 6-year-old watched on as a fire engine and ambulance peeled onto the street.

“Mentally, I’d given up. I thought I died. I literally thought to myself, ‘Wow, this is it,’” says McCarty. “When I saw the fire department coming out, there was just a portion of my brain that was like, ‘Hey, help is on the way. We’re OK.’”

The sentiment of that realization stuck with McCarty. He held onto the feeling that “help was on the way” for a long time — during his initial hospital stay, in and out of a medically induced coma, during recovery and between waves of pain.

“I always still had that little bit of sense in the back of my mind that, ‘Hey, I’m still here. I’m still holding on and that things will be okay,’” McCarty shares. “I just didn’t know when that would be.”

Shortly after he saw the fire department roll out, the pain kicked in, and it brought along the reality of what had happened to then-6-year-old McCarty. Another sound rang out, alarming albeit hopeful: more help. His dad was running down the block, “yelling and screaming like any normal parent would be at that point in time,” McCarty recounts.

His dad got down on the ground, kneeling beside his youngest son, looking at him with big-lensed glasses typical of early ‘90s eyewear fashion. McCarty could see the concern in his father’s eyes; he witnessed something far more haunting in the broad reflection.

“He couldn’t even touch me, but he was sitting right in front of me trying to just piece together what was going on,” McCarty tells PEOPLE. “At that stage, I watched the entire portion of my face just almost slide off in front of him because I could see it in his glasses.”

That is a sight McCarty will never shake from his memory, and there’s no question about its reality. The reflection may be something straight out of nightmares, but it wasn’t a hallucination at all.

Terry McCarty with his father and brother.Terry McCarty

The 6-year-old was flown to a bigger hospital in Las Vegas, where he began in-patient treatment

The local hospital in their small town didn’t have the right resources to help McCarty, whose extensive skin trauma obviously required long-term, intensive care. The doctors did what they could, cutting off his clothes and repeatedly dumping saline onto his body, pouring it on him in such large quantities that McCarty remembers hearing the sloshing sounds of fluids pooling on the floor beneath him.

McCarty breaks down that day into two “lucky breaks.” First, his neighbor happened to be outside with a sleeping bag on hand. Then, it just so happened that a nearby airport had a care flight ready to go, and the medical team was able to quickly transport McCarty over and fly him to Las Vegas for further treatment.

“There was no way I was going to be able to make a five and a half hour drive to get down to their burn unit,” he says. “Between the neighbor and that airport — quite literally, I wouldn’t be sitting here today if it wasn’t for both of those, or even if just one of them.”

The main portion of McCarty’s recovery happened in Las Vegas, which means his recollection of the time is both “fuzzy” and brutal.

Terry McCarty as a child in the hospital.Terry McCarty

“I always tell people that the fire is not the worst part of being a burn survivor. It’s honestly what comes after the fire,” he notes. After a life-saving plane delivered him to the better-equipped hospital, McCarty underwent a “debridement process,” which effectively removes dead, burnt skin from the body using a surgical brush.

“I remember those scrub tanks, because they started almost immediately. The best way that I can explain it was I was essentially laid on this strainer-style table. They would dip [me] down into the tub that had some solution stuff in it, and then they would pull [me] up and just start scrubbing,” recalls McCarty, who says he went through the process “a handful of times” in order to prevent his 73% dead skin from causing infections.

“My skin was so raw that I could literally feel somebody walk into my room. Just the disturbance of them walking into a room would almost set me on fire all over again,” McCarty describes. “When I was in Vegas during that particular timeframe, I did end up flatlining about six different times.”

About two or three months later, the Shriners Children’s organization heard about McCarty’s story. The pediatric care nonprofit funded a significant amount of his burn care at a dedicated center in Galveston, Texas. There, he underwent a number of major surgeries, like the amputation of his fingers.

“In Vegas, I was really touch-and-go with a lot of different things, between the medically induced coma and just the waves of pain medication and everything like that,” says McCarty. “But at Galveston, that’s where I really kind of started picking up the pieces of how everything changed.”

About one year after the accident, McCarty resumed elementary school in a completely different body

He tells the story 33 years later with the mental clarity of an adult, but he lived through it as a child. McCarty became a burn victim one week before his first day of first grade. He was hospitalized for nearly the whole calendar year to follow, then he returned to school. At that point, his family had moved from Nevada to Washington State, where McCarty still resides now.

“It was really nerve-wracking [starting school], because even after a year of being a burn survivor, it was one of those things — I was still trying to figure out how my body operated,” he notes. “At six and seven years old, you’re still really learning yourself as a human being and the things that you’re capable of.”

McCarty continues, “The accident pretty much erased everything prior to that just because of the trauma and whatnot. So not only was I learning how to just be in my body but also a different body than what I remembered, and I was also injected right back into school almost around the same exact time.”

Resuming his education was difficult, though McCarty says the administration set up a school assembly to prepare the other students for his arrival. Looking back, it was a fairly effective preemptive measure. McCarty fielded fewer questions than one might expect given the fact that he wore a variety of medical garments, splints and marks to aid in the healing process.

However, being a burn victim in elementary school is nothing like having those same scars in the “battlefield” of junior high, as McCarty describes it.

Terry McCarty as a child.Terry McCarty

“It took a lot of time and energy from me to be able to understand why people would treat me like that. Why would somebody call me Freddy Krueger if they had known the things that I’ve been through?” he tells PEOPLE. “I would have to say that that really occupied a lot of my teenage years … I had to really live in the moment to really figure that out.”

Finding work as an adult proved difficult, as prospective employers consistently dismissed McCarty as a ‘victim’

In turn, on the other side of graduation, McCarty wasn’t sure what was next for him. He spent his formative teen years developing a sense of self and self-love, but not a complete sense of direction. And as he was preparing for life after high school, McCarty lost one of his greatest sources of hope and encouragement. He was 17 when his father died of brain cancer.

“That was a really rough entry into adulthood,” says McCarty. “I really struggled with the world accepting me for who I was, because the moment somebody looks at me, they automatically go into that victim mindset: ‘Oh, well, he’s severely injured, and I wonder what happened to him.’”

In the context of employment, his burns became an ever greater hindrance than ever before. He remembers struggling to find “meaningful work,” or even just a job that would ensure he had “a roof over my head and food in my stomach and clothes on my back,” says McCarty.

As a young adult, he took to working on cars. He loved the hands-on activity of it; McCarty could take an engine apart and put it back together with no questions asked. So at the age of 24, after he tired enough of “having dead-end jobs,” he applied for a position at an oil-changing facility in his town.

Terry McCarty.Terry McCarty

The manager took one look at the burn victim and rejected him on site. “He was like, ‘I can’t hire you because you’re going to be a liability,’” McCarty recalls. “That just flipped some kind of switch in my brain. It was like, ‘All right, I’m done. I’m tired of people looking at me and automatically shooting me down.’”

He was fed up with the victimhood, but he knew he’d never fully phase out of it, not in others’ eyes. So he decided to trade the “victim” label for something more useful; instead, he would be a “survivor.”

He pursued work as a volunteer firefighter, despite a doctor’s doubts and two failed physical capability tests

McCarty applied to become a volunteer firefighter, though he admits he initially had his own doubts about how it would all pan out. But he surprised himself by passing the written test, and proceeded with momentum onto the next steps. He was two examinations — one medical and one physical — away from becoming the type of hero few could understand better than McCarty himself.

When he went in for the requisite medical tests, he received that all too familiar “victim” treatment.

“The doctor didn’t even put me through any tests. He just straight up looked at me like, ‘No. This is not going to work for you. I can’t clear you for this. I’m sorry.’” McCarty explains.

That immediate dismissal stirred up a new determination within the aspiring firefighter. It wasn’t anger, so to speak, but McCarty felt a fierce, fresh instinct to advocate for himself. He hit back at the doctor, asking him about his experience and proficiency working with burn survivors. The examiner admitted that he didn’t specialize in burns.

“I was like, ‘So what you’re telling me is that you’re giving me a conclusion on something that you don’t actually have any proficiency in?’ And then I just left. I went directly to the Central Kitsap Fire and Rescue’s headquarters, and I asked to speak with the battalion chief,” says McCarty.

He started explaining why that doctor was wrong before the district head could even sit down. McCarty listed all the reasons why he could be a burn survivor and a firefighter, but the battalion chief only had two questions for the prospective volunteer. He asked if McCarty could write his own name with a pen, which he answered by demonstrating it immediately on paper.

Then, the chief listed off the places on the body where humans lose most of their heat: at the top of the head, at the back of the neck, under the arms, around the groin and at the feet. He asked McCarty if any of those spots were damaged on his body, and he confirmed they were not.

Terry McCarty as a volunteer firefighter.Terry McCarty

They concluded that McCarty had a shot at joining the fire academy, but only if he passed the candidate physical agility test (CPAT).

“I was kind of on cloud nine that this was even a possibility at this section. So I started looking up on YouTube all the different things that they test you on, and I started to actually train for those things,” he recalls to PEOPLE.

McCarty failed his first attempt at the CPAT. “It was so grueling. I just lost it about three-quarters of the way through,” he admits. But quitting wasn’t on his radar, especially since he still had three more chances to qualify for an academy spot that season.

His second try — another failure — wasn’t actually the result of poor training, but rather a “wardrobe malfunction” on the day of, says McCarty.

“The drawstring in my sweatpants broke right beforehand. So I kept almost losing my pants,” says McCarty. He completed the CPAT in full, but finished just four seconds over the qualifying time limit.

“I went back with a new wardrobe and a new mindset, and I actually passed. I set one of the fastest records that season,” McCarty notes of his third attempt. “Two weeks after that, I started fire academy.”

Training fight fires brought about an unexpected personal healing process

The volunteer-level program was 12 weeks long, and the participants started out by becoming familiar with the gear and learning how to get fully suited up in 60 seconds or less. McCarty was the only trainee in his class who also had to figure out how to adapt the demanding routine in a way that fit his disability.

The extra step hardly slowed him down. He reached the same speeds as the rest of the group and even surpassed them. He was given the responsibility of being the class commander, meaning he acted as a liaison between his fellow trainees and their instructors.

The academy work became increasingly difficult for McCarty as they moved into more practical skill tests, like live fire exercises. While the simulations are entirely safe and thoroughly managed, they’re also extremely realistic, at least according to McCarty.

Terry McCarty as a volunteer firefighter.Terry McCarty

“Before academy, I wasn’t really afraid of fire and I didn’t have any qualms with it. I didn’t hide from it and I wasn’t scared of it,” he shares. “But there was one moment … I saw the fire come out of the ceiling and I saw it rolling towards me, and I had just a very split second where I froze. Because it kind of was the same exact visual of when the kerosene was coming at me.”

“But as soon as the fire got to me where I was at, and it went over me, it’s like it took that fear away from me when it went by me,” McCarty continues. “I realized that I was in my bunker gear and that I had the tools to do what I needed to do and I didn’t have to be afraid of it … I feel like that fire literally just cleansed and removed any issues that I had moving forward.”

Moments just like that one made the fire academy and post-training experience entirely worth it to McCarty, even if he eventually left his position as a volunteer firefighter. He pivoted to work for nonprofits that aid children who are burn survivors like himself.

He tells PEOPLE that he sometimes misses firefighting, and making the decision to change paths did put a strain on his mental health for some time. Ultimately, however, McCarthy concluded that going through fire academy and volunteering served as a catalyst for him to find even more purpose as a changemaker.

Terry McCarty.Terry McCarty

Having lived through his own firefighting experiences, he’s been able to give back in a deeply meaningful way.

“As a firefighter, you see the worst of your community, and that could really do a lot of damage to your emotional and mental [health],” says McCarty. He organizes motivational speaking programs for firefighting groups, and he’s also been working on a way to connect firefighters and burn survivors.

“I found a little bit of a niche on the outside of them to where I can still be kind of a part of that circle. I just don’t necessarily feel like my cards are being a firefighter anymore,” he adds.

Despite his brothers’ role in the accident, the family remains close as ever 33 years later

Though the fire academy uncovered mental scars McCarthy didn’t even realize existed, he never discovered wounds to soothe surrounding his lifelong bonds. This fact of his unrelenting friendship with his two older brothers, Ryan and Jason, often surprises people, considering the role they played in the fire three decades ago.

“That’s one of the most common questions that I get. ‘Well, do you forgive your brothers for what they did?’” McCarty reflects. “No. There was no forgiveness needed to be given. We were kids.”

Terry McCarty with his fiancé, Kenzie, and their son Weston.Terry McCarty

It didn’t take long for him to come to the conclusion that what happened was the “definition of an accident,” says McCarty, who has built his own branch of family in recent years. He and his fiancé, Kenzie, share an 8-year-old son, Weston.

The three brothers live minutes away from each other, and they regularly enjoy the wonders of watching their children play together. McCarty looks up to his older siblings now, as a fellow parent, in the same way he did when he was 6 years old. As a young kid, he never wanted Ryan and Jason to feel guilt or fear. McCarty never put the blame on them.

“It was simply a case where curiosity was outpaced by understanding. They had no idea what they were doing. Had they known what they were doing, they wouldn’t have done it,” McCarty adds of the kerosene accident.

He’s also aware that they bear a weight, too. Witnessing the fire left Ryan and Jason haunted in ways that hide from the surface of their skin.

Terry McCarty with his brothers Ryan and Jason.Terry McCarty

“I took on the physical portion of this whole accident. They both split the emotional and mental portion of it,” says McCarty.

McCarty still copes with trauma from the accident, especially as memories resurface

Trauma is strange like that, he observes. It manifests in different forms, and it evolves. Over the years, McCarty has gained memories about his nearly fatal accident, like when he recently recalled the roaring, bonfire-like sound of the fire wrapped around him. But the unfixed nature of trauma colors even the most vivid of memories with shreds of doubt.

“The way that I see it is I have two things I’m working against: time and trauma,” says the former firefighter. “Trauma will rewrite your memories in ways to protect yourself from the events that took place. But then you top that off with time. Time just distorts things. It makes things fuzzy. You lose things, maybe things completely get rewritten.”

A few years ago, he returned to his hometown in Hawthorne to try and find the exact spot where he sustained that life-altering heat damage, and he wanted to see the neighbor who saved his life. At the time of the accident, McCarty’s family had no prior relationship with the man, and they moved away shortly after. 30 years later, he sought that reconnection back in Nevada.

McCarty visited the local fire department, and he saw a photo of himself on their wall. None of the staff who actually helped him that day still worked there, but he was immediately recognized and welcomed.

Terry McCarty as a child in the hospital.Terry McCarty

He asked the firefighters if they knew where the incident had happened, and he described the area by recounting what he had witnessed after crawling just slightly out of the sleeping bag. For one second, then-6-year-old McCarty believed himself to be dead, but he found hope — poignant, lasting hope — in that image of his neighbor running across the dirt lot and summoning the fire department.

McCarty saw the bay doors roll up and the rescue vehicles drive out, and he knew at that moment that he would be okay. Help was on the way, and he could see it then and can recall it now vividly. But years later, McCarty’s description of that vantage point only served to confuse those in the fire station.

“They just couldn’t think of where this would be. It didn’t quite fit and align with any of the houses where it could have been,” he explains. “So there’s this little thing inside my head of like, ‘In that moment, was I seeing something that my trauma was telling me that I was seeing? Was I seeing something that didn’t even happen?’”

And ultimately, McCarty has to himself — does it matter? If he did hallucinate in that moment, was that really so bad? If, after surviving an accident so severe it left him physically maimed, traumatized and displaced from his home, he dreamed up an image that carried him through life’s later obstacles, then maybe it isn’t anything to beat himself up over.

“There were a lot of times right after that when I still had that same mental fortitude of, ‘Okay, I can’t move my body, I can’t talk, I can’t do anything. Everything hurts, but everything’s going to be okay. You’re still here,’” McCarty says.

Perhaps that memory, real or fabricated, is a superpower, and McCarty’s past 33 years of resilience are proof enough. He wonders, “Had I not had that hope, and they just picked me up and took me to the hospital, would my mental status have been way different?”