Survivor: Millright Beats Odds After Plunge Into Molten Nickel

PORTLAND - Kenneth Alvis, who fell into a vat of molten nickel nearly four months ago, can't explain his surprising recovery.

"I beat the odds," Alvis said from his bed in the Oregon Burn Center. "I wasn't supposed to make it. That's what they told me.

"At some point I must have made a decision, the Big Guy must have made a decision, because I'm still here."

Alvis, 33, was severely burned over 87 percent of his body. Spared were his head, his feet, and three small patches - on his thigh, near his elbow and one on his stomach where his belt buckle protected him.

In January, Alvis, an apprentice millwright at the Glenbrook Nickel Co. in Riddle, was changing electrical pads in a furnace that powered the smelter, something he'd done many times before.

He dropped a tool into the vat, tried to retrieve it, fell and landed on a semi-hardened crust covering the molten metal. The crust cracked, spewing liquid nickel at 3,000 degrees onto his clothes. They burst into flames.

Alvis didn't wake up for a month.

Dr. Philip F. Parshley, medical director of the Burn Center, removed three tiny swatches of skin from the patches remaining on Alvis' body and sent them to Biosurface Technology in Boston.

There, they were cultured in a nutrient base over a month's time into about 6 square feet of ultra-thin sheets of skin.

The skin was returned to the Burn Center attached to petroleum jelly-covered gauze so it could be handled.

In two separate operations, Parshley stapled the skin, gauze and all, to Alvis' body.

He figures he used about 1,000 staples.

Among burn his patients, Alvis was "one of the worst who survived," Parshley said. "You have to understand Ken. . . . I could tell early on he was a survivor."

After more than three months in bed, Alvis is slowing learning to move again, to walk and feed himself.

"Everything's kind of a conquest," he said. "It's kind of like a baby growing up."

Alvis, the father of three children, hopes to be well enough by his 34th birthday Wednesday to be transferred from the Burn Center to the physical therapy unit at Emanuel Hospital and Health Center.

By June 1, he hopes to be well enough to attend a concert by one of his favorite rock groups, the Black Crowes.

Alvis will not return to work as a millwright.

"I'll never be able to work that kind of job again," he said. "I'll just have to re-educate myself. Maybe even better myself."