Rainbow demonstration victim has lawsuit award cut by appeal

An old story for this blog but Alonzo Yanes, a high school student burned in one of the worst stories of the Rainbow Experiment, had the lawsuit award reduced on appeal (via the New York Post): 

An appeals court Thursday cut in half the $60 million jury award for a Beacon High School student who was horribly burned in a since-banned chemistry experiment gone awry — still making it the largest payout in New York.

Alonzo Yanes was awarded the massive sum in 2019 after jurors heard about his horrific experience getting third-degree burns over 30 percent of his body at age 16 after a chemistry teacher was demonstrating the “Rainbow Experiment” — which uses highly flammable methanol to light various salts to produce different-colored flames.

The Appellate Division, First Department Thursday acknowledged that the excruciating burns, recovery, and the struggles ahead for Yanes, as he must live out the rest of his life with disfiguring scars, but still found the jury’s award “excessive.”

The decision laid out that the verdict should be reduced to $12 million for past pain and suffering and another $17 million for the future.

Even after it's been cut back, it's still a very large award, and one that has seemingly caused New York City public schools to not perform this demonstration anymore. I hope schools around the country either stop doing the rainbow demonstration, or institute the simplest best practices, including removing bulk containers of methanol from the room during the actual demonstration. 

I hope that the award will bring Mr. Yanes a tiny amount of peace. Best wishes to him, and the other victims from the Beacon School incident. 

More on the Beacon School incident: FDNY finds code violations

The latest from The New York Times on the Beacon School incident, where both FDNY and state labor officials are closing the barn door after the horses have left exerting their regulatory oversight:

Fire Department investigators have cited Beacon High School in Manhattan for eight violations, finding that dangerous chemicals were being stored unsafely and that safety equipment and practices were lacking in at least three rooms. One was the makeshift lab where two students were engulfed in flames last week when a chemistry demonstration went horribly awry. 

The department gave the school, which is on the Upper West Side, 10 days to correct some of the violations of fire and building codes, and 30 days for others. But it did not issue a “cease and desist” order, which could have closed the teaching labs, James Long, a Fire Department spokesman, said on Wednesday. 

The state Labor Department is also investigating the accident and its context, state officials said, because regulations require safety equipment like chemical fume hoods when teachers handle potentially explosive flammable liquids and toxic chemicals in the workplace. There was none in Room 317, a “science demo room,” where Alonzo Yanes, 16, was badly burned when fumes from the methanol used by a teacher to burn different substances ignited. Alonzo remained in critical condition on Wednesday in the burn unit of New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center. The other student suffered relatively minor burns. 

The Fire Department violations, issued to the principal, Ruth Lacey, also focused on the chemical storage room, Room 331; the school was ordered to immediately reduce the supply of hazardous chemicals to the amounts allowed by law, including no more than 15 gallons of flammable liquids and no more than five pounds of toxic substances. In a formal science laboratory, Room 321, the school was ordered to provide a safety shower and eye wash for decontamination, and to show that a chemical fume hood there was being tested annually for safe ventilation of dangerous fumes...

It is a funny aspect of American life that regulators always seem to show up after an incident and rarely before; also, they tend to regulate equipment and logistics rather than people*. Of all their concerns, only the fume hood would be been helpful in this particular situation.

Something tells me that New York public high schools are about to have some surprise inspections, either by FDNY or by the city Education Department. Should be interesting to follow.

*It's probably actually their statuary authority that does that.

Placeholder for Beacon School incident

I'm mostly gathering thoughts, articles together for (potentially) a longer comment on the Beacon School "rainbow flame" experiment. Still haven't come up with any great thoughts yet.

Here's the New York Post's account of the accident. This section is detailed (almost too detailed; I am withholding judgment until I see more):

...Two sophomores were injured in the explosion. Alonzo Yanes, 16, remains at Cornell Medical Center’s burn unit with second and third degree burns to his face, neck and torso; Julia Saltonstall, 16, suffered first degree singes to her arm, torso and face and was treated and released. 

“It’s absurd that those students weren’t wearing goggles,” said one source. “It’s lucky they weren’t blinded.” 

Additionally, the teacher poured the highly flammable alcohol out of a gallon container rather than having on hand only the few milliliters necessary, one source said, speaking of the ongoing investigation on condition of anonymity. 

Finally, and most critically, Poole did not ensure that the fire had completely gone out in all four crucibles used in the experiment. 

Unbeknownst to her or her students, one of the ceramic vessels still had a low, clear, barely visible fire...

The invisible flame aspect of methanol is not necessarily well-known.

A more sober account of the regulatory aspects (including our favorite CSB investigator, Mary Beth Mulcahy) is in the New York Times' longer look at the Beacon School incident.

It will be very interesting to see what sort of initiatives flow out of this incident or if it will be ignored. Clearly, the UCLA incident (and legal coercion from the Los Angeles District Attorney) were enough to get changes in University of California procedures. Will such things flow out of the Beacon School incident?