'Grey's Anatomy' actress loses home and four pets in tragic house fire, plus more stars' near-death experiences
By Wonderwall.com Editors of Wonderwall |
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In November 2022, comedian Jay Leno was hospitalized for more than a week at the Los Angeles-area Grossman Burn Center with second- and third-degree burns to his face, chest and hands following a gasoline fire in the 140,000-square-foot Burbank, California, garage that houses his car collection. The former "Tonight Show" host was under a 1907 White Steam Car working on a clogged fuel line with pal Dave Killackey moments before the accident. "With a steam car, you have gasoline, but you also have a vaporizer which is heated by a pilot light to turn water into steam," Jay explained in an interview with People magazine. As air was pushed into the clogged line, "I got a face full of gasoline" that lit up due to Jay's close proximity to the pilot light.
He shut his eyes, held his breath and didn't panic. "I was under the car maybe 10 seconds before Dave pulled me out. Any longer than that I could have lost my eye," he revealed, adding that he smothered his face in Dave's work shirt to put out the flames. At the burn center, he underwent two skin-grafting surgeries -- one with human cadaver skin, one with pig intestine, People reported -- and received hyperbaric oxygen therapy twice a day to help heal the burns (he's seen here not long after he was discharged).
"Jay is definitely an outlier in terms of how well he's healed considering the severity of his injuries," his surgeon, Dr. Peter Grossman, told People. The "Jay Leno's Garage" star has kept his sense of humor about what happened, telling The Wall Street Journal, "Eight days later, I had a brand new face. And it's better than what was there before." According to Jay, "You have to joke about it. There's nothing worse than whiny celebrities. If you joke about it, people laugh along with you."
Keep reading to see Jay's "brand new face" three months later...
