A rugby player suffers serious burns after a work accident in a garden

The Belgian national team rugby player Bruno Vliegen, 24, suffered burns on more than 37% of his body in an accident at work while working in a gardenand his entourage have launched a collection to help his partner and his one-year-old daughter.

The athlete, who plays as a prop and had just signed with Soignies for the next season, was injured while burning branches in the town of Écaussinnessouth of Brussels, when he was using a log with gasoline as a torch and an explosion occurred, reported the newspapers Sidinfo and DH Les Sports +.

“After a few seconds, a small explosion occurred in the pile of branches and Bruno was surrounded by the fire. Everything happened very quickly, to the point that he thought he was going to die. He was screaming, but no one could hear him. He curled up in a fetal position and was trying as best he could to protect his face when he heard a rustle between the branches,” said the Nicolas Gigot Foundation, with the consent of Vliegen.

The young man saw an opening in the flames and jumped through it, taking off his shirt as he ran, although his body continued to burn.

“He had to take refuge in a kind of horse trough located not far away to put out the fire, before being taken to hospital,” added a spokeswoman for the foundation.

Vliegen, international with the Belgian “Black Devils” and with twenty matches for the national team, is hospitalized in the major burns unit of the Grand Hôpital of Charleroi.

His life is no longer in danger, but he begins “a long battle, marked by cures, possible grafts, rehabilitation and reconstruction,” indicated local media, which explain that the collection seeks to raise aid to help his partner and for little Lio during the recovery of a player who in the world of rugby “is unanimously appreciated for his generosity and availability,” according to the newspaper DH Les Sports+.

“We are launching this collection to help Bruno and his family overcome this ordeal.. Each donation, regardless of its amount, will be a stone contributed to its reconstruction. Behind every euro there is a message: ‘You are not alone,'” said the Nicolas Gigot Foundation.

Bruno Vliegen had started playing rugby with Nicolas Gigot, a young Belgian rugby player from the Liège region, who died in 2020 at the age of 19 after suffering from hyperthermia during training that ended his life after being hospitalized for several weeks.