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by WILLIAM MURPHY
Burns are not like other injuries. They don't heal like broken bones.
And when the burns are to the face and visible parts of the body, people notice.
Fire Lt. Stephen Halliday suffered severe burns over more than half his body fighting a Queens fire nearly three years ago. He is missing the tips of two fingers on his right hand and two fingers on his left hand. His ears were fused to his badly burned head, which will never regrow hair.
He's not sure how or why he survived after being caught in flames for 15 to 60 seconds that lab tests on his gear showed at 1,330 to 1,800 degrees. Water boils at 212 degrees.
"It's not too bad, now. I wear a cap and long sleeves, and people don't notice until they get up close," he said in a recent interview. But people would react when they saw him in public during the 18 months of his recovery when he wore protective garments over his burns.
"I've had people crying at the checkout counter when I wore my pressure garments," he said.
He fumbles when handling small objects, so he doesn't use coins at stores and tries to use a debit card, instead.
He is sensitive to how he looks, but he agreed to have his picture taken for Newsday because he thought his daughters, Emily, 14 , and Sarah, 12, would get a kick out of it. That's also why he appeared in "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" in June for a show to be aired next month.
He has read the Fire Department report on the incident that left him this way, and he accepts its findings - up to a point.
"Every time you have a firefighter injury, multiple things went wrong," he said. "I didn't wear my hood or chinstrap. Ninety percent of the time, you get away with it. I did, and then I got caught. That's the nature of the job.
"If I had my hood on, if I had my chinstrap on, it might have been different." But if I had my hood on and my ears were covered, maybe I wouldn't have felt the heat as quickly as I did and order the guys out. ..."
He makes it a point to go to the Fire Department Training Academy periodically and tell recruits: "Wear your gear."
He knows a lot of firefighters visited him at New York Weill Cornell Medical Center while he was recovering.
"I can't say enough about the medical care I got. It was better than a CEO would get. The brothers took care of me," he said of his fellow firefighters.
His wife, Linda, is still a case worker for Suffolk County. His children are reaching the independent teens, and he has not decided what's next.
"I don't know. I'm 45 years old. I do know I have a second chance," he said.
"They told me that in three years I'd be as good as I'd ever get. That's in a couple of months, and I know I'm not getting any better than I am now."
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