A DAD has issued a desperate plea for disposable BBQs to be banned after his son’s foot was “melted” by stepping on a beach moments after one had been used.
Will Tyler, nine, was left temporarily unable to walk and in need of a skin graft after jumping into an “invisible hotspot” at Formby Beach in Merseyside.
The horrific incident unfolded when the schoolboy, along with his parents and sister, travelled from Stockport for a day trip to the beach.
Recalling the horrifying incident, Will’s dad, Toby Tyler, told GB News: “We were on a day out at the beach and Will stood on some sand where a disposable BBQ had been previously used.
“The disposable BBQ had cooled and been removed so it was a safe space for children playing but sand is an incredible insulator of heat, so the heat that penetrated into the dry sand when the BBQ was there, was retained over several hours. It was basically an invisible hotspot where William jumped at one point and his feet sank in and he sustained his injuries.
“It was extremely hot. His feet sunk in where it was absolutely extraordinarily hot and as his feet sank in, his skin stripped very much immediately.
Explaining what happened next, Toby added: “From there, we had to go to a local hospital and then transferred straight to the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital, he stayed there for nine days and eight nights. He had skin grafts from his thigh onto his worse burnt foot. When he was released from the hospital, he was using a wheelchair for some time and a walking frame.”
“His foot has healed well, he is not in discomfort anymore. There is scarring there which will remain and he is still in regular contact with the hospital, every six weeks or so, where we are checking on the scar, scar management, and looking at the graph all the time. This will remain with him, that’s just the nature of this sort of injury.”
Arguing why we should ban the disposable BBQs, he added: “This is the crux of things, there are a variety of reasons as to why we are pursuing a ban on disposable BBQs. There is the environmental impact, the wildfire element, the single-use wastage element, we are looking at a million of these units a year going into landfills. Aldi has just stopped selling them, they estimated around 35 tonnes alone of single-use waste that they are going to get rid of. There is also this human element, in the last 10 days, there have been three children hurt in a similar fashion to William. One of them stood on really hot sand from where a BBQ had been before another where the BBQ had been buried because they are so difficult sometimes for people to clear away because of the mess and the heat. There was also another boy who stood on one which had been discarded and left there and it nearly severed his Achilles tendon. This is just the last ten days, there are incredibly frequently these injuries and this is the issue really. There are so many alternatives, we just don’t need to have these.
“We thought he had stood on wooden kebab sticks which we had seen in the sand. It tools us a few seconds to work out what had happened, the scream that came from him was extraordinary and something that will stick with us really. This is something which is incredibly common, unfortunately. If you do a quick troll through social media and Twitter, it is extraordinarily common and a real problem.”
“Last year William went back to the beach where he did some fundraising with an 8-kilometer walk to represent the 8 nights he stayed in the hospital. As we came back from the walk, we saw people near the exact same spot we had been, clearing and tidying and leaving the beach and this is the frustrating thing because they thought they were doing the right thing by taking the disposable with them. But, there were more people arriving at the beach than there were leaving the beach at this point, so these people arriving had no idea what had come before. There are invisible dangers there and this is an inherent issue with disposable BBQs.”
Backing Toby’s calls for a ban, Marcus Bawdon, the owner of the UK BBQ School, told GB News: “They are dangerous, they are not good for the environment, they are really not good to cook on as well so I would really like to see them banned. I was sad to hear about Will and what Toby and his family went through. It is more and more frequent, people are BBQing more and more, especially on sunny days like this, and it’s just a time bomb waiting to happen. I am hearing more and more cases of this.
“You can get little units for the disposables that lift them off the ground. I mean, it’s not about BBQ, it can be great fun with delicious food. The problem is these grills are sat straight on the ground and I’ve seen it before where they have burnt a hole in the tabletop of a wooden table. The heat from these is quite extreme and to be in contact with the sand or the ground is not good. It just leaves a hidden time bomb waiting for someone to come sit on it. People see these as disposable, they can just throw them away or bury them and that’s not really good either.”
