Handle burns, breaks, and sprains

Cool burns with clean water, splint broken bones straight and still, rest sprains — and get the hurt person to real care.

takes patience⏳ a daytradition — not yet hand-tested

Burns, broken bones, and sprains are the big three injuries of building and living rough. Each has one simple first move — cool it, still it, or rest it — done calmly and early. Your job is not to fix the injury; it is to stop it getting worse and get the person to real medical care in good shape.

Stay calm and speak calmly. A hurt person copies the calmest voice near them.

You need

• Clean, cool water — the one true burn treatment. Safe drinking water is ideal; any clean cool water beats none.
• Clean cloth — for loose burn covers and for padding. Boiled and sun-dried is best.
• Straight stiff things for splints — sticks, planks, rolled bark, a tightly rolled mat. A splint is anything rigid tied alongside a limb to keep it still.
• Strips of cloth or cord — to tie splints and slings. Wide strips are better; thin cord digs in.
• Soft padding — cloth, moss in cloth, spare clothing — between splint and skin.
• A plan for reaching real care — know before an accident how you would carry someone out.

Steps

1. Burns: cool first, and keep cooling.
   • Pour or run cool clean water over the burn for a full 20 minutes. That is far longer than feels natural — time it. Cooling keeps working long after the fire is gone, because the heat inside the skin keeps burning.
   • Use cool water, not ice or icy water — extreme cold damages burned skin further.
   • Slide off rings, bracelets, and tight clothing near the burn now, before swelling starts.
   • Do not burst blisters. The blister skin is the body's own clean cover.
   • After cooling, lay a clean, dry, non-fluffy cloth loosely over the burn. No pressing, no tight wrapping.
   • Never put butter, oil, toothpaste, mud, or ash on a burn. They seal heat in and add germs.
   • Give the person water to sip. Big burns leak a lot of body fluid.
2. Breaks: keep the bone perfectly still, as it lies.
   • Suspect a break if the limb looks bent wrong, grinds, swells fast, or the person cannot put any weight on it.
   • Do not pull, straighten, or "set" the bone. Splint it in the position you found it.
   • Tie a rigid splint alongside the limb so the joint above and the joint below the break cannot move. For a forearm: splint from above the elbow to past the wrist, then support it in a cloth sling around the neck.
   • Pad everywhere the splint touches skin. Tie firmly but not tight.
   • Check the fingers or toes beyond the splint every hour: they must stay warm, pink, and able to feel touch. Pale, cold, numb, or blue means the ties are too tight — loosen at once.
   • If bone shows through the skin: cover the wound with clean cloth, do not push the bone back, do not wash inside. Splint around it. This is urgent — move toward real care now.
3. Sprains: rest and raise.
   • A sprain is a wrenched joint — stretched or torn cords inside, usually an ankle or wrist. It swells and hurts but the bone lines up straight.
   • Rest it: no weight for at least a day or two. Raise it above heart level when sitting or lying.
   • Cool it with a wet cloth for 20 minutes at a time, several times a day, for the first two days.
   • Wrap it snugly (not tight) with a cloth strip for support. Same check as splints: toes and fingers stay warm and pink.
   • If the person still cannot bear any weight after two days, treat it as a possible break: splint it and head for real care.
4. Get the person to real medical care. All of the above is first aid — the holding action. Broken bones need proper setting; bad burns need proper treatment. Arrange the trip the same day whenever you can.

Watch out

• Go for real care immediately, not tomorrow, for: any burn bigger than the person's own palm; burns on the face, hands, feet, joints, or groin; burns that look white, leathery, or charred (deep burns can be painless — that is worse, not better); any burn on a baby or small child; any open break; a limb that is cold, blue, or numb; or a suspected broken thigh, hip, or pelvis.
• Never move someone who may have hurt their neck or back — after a fall from height or a blow to the head or spine — unless fire, water, or collapse forces you. Moving them can paralyze. Keep the head still, keep them warm, bring help to them.
• Ties always feel fine at first, then swelling makes them tight. Re-check splints, wraps, and slings every hour on the first day. Loosen early.
• Shock is the quiet killer after big injuries — pale, cold, sweaty skin, fast weak pulse, confusion. Lie the person flat, raise the legs unless they are the injury, keep them warm, and treat the trip to real care as urgent.
• "Walking it off" a break or bad sprain turns a six-week injury into a permanent limp. Still and rested heals; used and jarred does not.

How it works

Burned skin keeps cooking from its own stored heat, so 20 minutes of water genuinely shrinks the injury. A broken bone's sharp ends cut flesh, vessels, and nerves with every movement, so stillness is protection, not comfort. A sprain heals by regrowing torn fibers, which only knit if the joint stops being wrenched. All three treatments are the same idea: stop the damage from continuing, and let the body — and then real medical care — do the repair.