Rick Thompson’s scarred face cringed in pain and fear as he recounted details of the day when a fireball of 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit burned the clothes off his body and the skin off his muscles.

Walking to the table in his mother’s small, second-floor apartment in Caribou, Thompson acknowledged a visitor and raised his arm slowly for a handshake, but asked that the squeeze of his hand be gentle.

The skin on his arms, hands, neck and face are pink, the color of new, tender flesh. His hands, covered with new skin, ache when he performs simple tasks. Getting into a car and driving is a huge undertaking as the chill of northern Maine’s weather exacerbates the pain.

Thompson, 48, faces months of daily, painful occupational and physical therapy and dressing changes at Cary Medical Center for injuries he suffered more than a year ago in an industrial accident at the Boralex Fort Fairfield Inc. electrical plant.

He learned recently that he might need more surgery soon to repair tendon damage in one hand. Thompson is getting stronger as each week goes by, he said, but his speech remains slow, the words easing out at their own pace.

Thompson was hospitalized for nearly 10 months for injuries that included second- and third-degree burns over more than 50 percent of his body after he was set on fire when a circuit breaker shorted out and blew at the Fort Fairfield biomass electrical plant Oct. 22, 2002.

When an 800-amp breaker went from 480 volts of electricity to about 32,000 volts, the explosion ignited his clothing and skin, according to a government report.

Thompson first was taken to The Aroostook Medical Center and then was quickly flown to Maine Medical Center in Portland. Three days later, he was at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital burn unit, considered one of the best in the world.

Kept in a medically induced coma for five weeks, the County man was still on a respirator when he woke up. He had nine skin-graft operations in Boston, and three more in Portland.

“I feel lucky to have survived the accident,” Thompson said recently in the apartment he shares with his mother, Beatrice Maynard, in Caribou. “I came so close to death.

“I am starting my life over, reassessing my values,” he said. “I’ve slowed down, and I appreciate things I took for granted before.”

Another man injured in the accident, co-worker Scott Haggerty, 35 of Presque Isle, also was hospitalized. He was not as seriously injured and returned to work within a week.

Badly burned

Thompson arrived home from Maine Medical Center last Oct. 27, one year and five days after the accident. It was the second time he left the hospital. During the year, he was home for three months, but was hospitalized again because of infections.

He is scarred from the top of his feet to his head, from the burns and areas where skin was taken for grafting. There is so much scar tissue on his body that he has a hard time with the skin grafts.

More than one year after the accident, Thompson said no one from the state or the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration has contacted him about the accident.

He claims that safety policies were changed and safety equipment was installed at the plant only after the accident. He thinks that there were not enough employees working to operate the plant safely at the time.

Kevin McKeen, plant manager for Boralex at Fort Fairfield, would not discuss the accident or the investigation when contacted. Lori Russell, a human resources officer for Boralex, also did not answer inquiries.

The accident was investigated by OSHA. Officials were alerted to the incident by a call from a reporter several days after it occurred.

Cyrille Young, the OSHA investigator in the case, was not allowed to speak about the incident, nor was his Bangor supervisor, Tony Lemire.

A request under the Freedom of Information Act, however, resulted in the release of a 480-page OSHA report.

OSHA fined Boralex Fort Fairfield Inc. $5,000 for what the agency called a “serious violation.”

According to the citation, Boralex employees were “not trained and competent in the proper use of the special precautionary techniques, personal protective equipment, insulating and shielding materials, and insulated tools for working on or near exposed energized parts of electrical equipment.”

Boralex requested that the penalty be reduced to $3,750 because the company incurred costs to train personnel and purchase equipment. After being granted the reduction, the company paid the penalty four months after the incident.

The company expended more than $18,000 to retrofit a new breaker, and $32,000 for the purchase of two more breakers at the facility after the accident, according to the report.

“The fine is not even close to what they should have paid for violating safety procedures,” Thompson said. “They covered up many things, even stopping employees from talking.

“OSHA never even talked with me during their investigation,” he said.

At the time of the accident, Thompson was head of the electrical instrumentation department at Aroostook Valley Electric, a wholly owned facility of Boralex, a Quebec company that owns several electrical generation plants in Maine. He also is a master electrician.

Thompson, a 28-year veteran industrial instrument technician, had worked for Aroostook Valley Electric for eight years at the time of the accident. He worked at both Boralex plants in Aroostook County, at Fort Fairfield and Ashland. He also had worked for the Cianbro Corp. when the plants were built.

Boralex still owns the two plants. The Fort Fairfield biomass plant, built in 1987 by Cianbro, burns wood waste and develops 34 megawatts of power.

With his employment terminated by Boralex last July while he was still at Maine Medical Center, Thompson now is on Workers’ Compensation. Boralex had put him on notice of the job termination in May.

As a result, the former department head lost all of his benefits; all of his medical and dental coverage stopped, even for his two teenage sons who live with their mother. Thompson was forced to get his sons onto a Medicaid program.

“They terminated me so that they would not have to provide any benefits,” he said. “I lost eye care, dental and medical benefits and long-term disability benefits.”

He said the company claims he is on Workers’ Compensation and he isn’t their problem. Workers’ Compensation takes care of medical costs related only to the accident and pays about 60 percent of an injured worker’s salary. The maximum benefit is about half of what Thompson made on the job.

“The owners don’t seem to be liable for what happened to me,” he said. “They’ve told me I am a problem of Workers’ Compensation.”

Thompson apparently has no recourse against the company.

“I can’t sue them for terminating my employment,” Thompson said when asked if he had considered that possibility. “Lawyers told me I can’t.”

The deadly fireball

Recalling the accident, Thompson said the Fort Fairfield plant had experienced a power outage, and employees were restarting the plant, a process that takes about 12 hours. The plant had not been operating for a couple of weeks.

As the only one who could troubleshoot the computers in the building, Thompson first had to open a large breaker. About 2 feet by 3 feet in size, the breaker required him to use both hands to flip.

He claimed that the breaker was a “swapped-out breaker,” one removed because it was not working properly, and safety lock-out procedures were not in place.

“As soon as I unlocked the breaker to insert it into place, it blew,” he remembered. “I felt the electricity go through my body, and I saw a fireball go by my head as I had my hands on the breaker.

“I hit the trip switch with my left hand, and it would not open,” he said. “I stood back, and there were flames all around me. My uniform burst into flames.”

He remembers rolling on the ground, still conscious, to put out the fire. His clothes were in embers when the flames went out.

He remembers Haggerty, the co-worker also injured in the incident, ripping off the remainder of his shirt, and that his arms were still burning.

“Looking at myself, I was black,” Thompson said. “My helmet and safety glasses saved my head from more severe injuries.”

It was over in a couple of seconds. His body was burned from the waist up, including his arms, torso, and the right side of his head and ear.

Thompson says the worst part of his treatment was, and still is, the changing of his dressings.

“It felt [at the beginning] like they were taking my skin right off,” he said, cringing at the memory. “Burns are the most painful thing that can happen to a person.”

His injuries include right shoulder restriction and tendon damage in his fingers. He still can’t go out in the cold or be in direct sunlight because the accident destroyed his body’s temperature control receptors.

Thompson’s daily therapy helps him to regain mobility in his arms, head and right side. The therapy helps to stretch the tight, constricted skin that has regrown.

Progress is slow.

He has persistent wounds, which are aggravated by the daily therapy, and he admitted that he still has a way to go medically to be more independent.

“I am disabled,” he said, adding, “I can’t even run a computer because of the condition of my hands. Using tools with my hands is nearly impossible.”

Seventeen months after the accident, Thompson faces more surgery, but his doctors are waiting for him to gain some strength. He said his life revolves around his therapy, making his way around his mother’s apartment, and seeing his two sons.

Despite all the pain, past and future, Thompson said he knows he is lucky to be alive.

“If the fireball would have hit me head-on, I would have died at the scene,” he said. “God wanted to help me.

“My immediate future plans are to spend quality time with my boys,” the former youth sports coach said.

Thompson said it was difficult to think about another career, but that might happen “in a couple of years down the road.”

“I spent most of my life getting to the top of my field, and I was real good at it,” he said. “This has changed my whole life.”