Two Weeks After Pennsylvania Amish School Explosion, Here’s How the Three Girls Are Doing

We’ve got a new update following the March 27 explosion at the Spartansburg, Pennsylvania Amish school which left three girls seriously injured.

Two of the girls were aged 6 and 11, and are students at the school, while the third girl, age 17, is their teacher. We learn in the update (shared in full below) that the 11-year-old and 17-year-old are sisters.

Following the early-morning explosion – triggered by the wrong fuel, gasoline, being used in a woodburning stove – the girls were airlifted to two different hospitals in New York state. The schoolhouse burned to the ground.

This update comes courtesy of Kelsey Bova, a local EMT who was the first person on the scene of the accident that day. Bova is also running the GoFundMe for the girls and their families, which is where she gets us up to speed on the three girls’ conditions.

How The Girls Are Doing – And A (Good News?) Correction

There is one correction that can be called good news in some sense. It was originally reported that the two younger girls had undergone skin graft surgery, while at the time, the oldest girl was awaiting skin graft surgery.

As it turns out, the 11-year-old did not need skin graft surgery at all. Apparently the earlier report had mixed her up with the teacher, who is her sister.

The news in the update is generally encouraging, though for at least one girl, the burns are described as “very severe”. Here is the full update from Bova, who shared this April 8th:

I spoke with both families yesterday. All three girls are working on recovering. The youngest has had a liquid skin graft applied to her face (they use the patients own stem cells to create a suspension that is sprayed onto wounds. It speeds healing, reduces scarring, and requires less donor skin.)

The 3rd grade girl has improved enough not to need skin graft surgery! I was previously told she had already had 2 skin graft surgeries but it was a mix up with her sister, the teacher.

The teacher has had multiple skin graft surgeries on her legs where she has very severe burns and she is doing psychical therapy daily.

Please continue to pray for these sweet young girls! Both families asked me to express their sincerest gratitude for the outpouring of love and support!

So originally it was thought that all three would have skin graft surgery, but it turns out that just two of them needed it. Based on this, it sounds like one of the girls is less severely burned than the other two, who have facial and leg burns.

Let’s pray for these girls to have as smooth a recovery as possible, and for their families. Bills for their medical care could reach into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. If you’d like to pitch in to the GoFundMe, I’ll repost it below, or you can find it here.

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