Burns victim urges caution at barbecues

A nurse who received life- threatening burns at a garden party to celebrate a child’s Confirmation has pleaded with people to be vigilant with barbecues.

Joanne McMahon spent 131 days in the burns unit at St James’s Hospital in Dublin after being engulfed in flames when she lit a bain marie food warmer at a celebration in May 2014.

She was initially airlifted from Limerick to University Hospital Cork and then transferred to St James’s Hospital, where she spent months in an induced coma.