NAME: Iris Miller
DATE OF FIRE: April 29, 1996
AGE AT TIME
OF FIRE: 55
LOCATION:
INJURY:
Morton Grove, Ill.
Severely burned and lost all her fingers on her right hand.
“Thinking of how home fire sprinklers might have changed my life … I wish I’d had that chance.”
Iris Miller of Morton Grove, Ill., has found it easy to live up to the meanings of her name. Faith, hope and wisdom have carried her through many challenges, perhaps most importantly the night of April 29, 1996.
Just 11 days after her fifty-fifth birthday, Iris was enjoying a quiet evening in her bedroom nestled under the covers and reading a book when she dozed off. Never quite accustomed to her husband traveling, and with her son at band rehearsal, Iris assumed she’d awaken at any sound – but she didn’t. As the smoke alarms blared, she slept.
It was the smoke that finally roused her to the fire caused by a heating pad that had shorted. Her last memory from inside the room was of struggling with the doorknob. The door had swollen shut.
As fire and smoke grew inside her room, her saving grace was her son, who had just returned home.
When he finally got the door open, he pulled his severely injured mother through the house to safety.
The fire left Iris in critical condition. She went from hospitals to burn centers struggling with a collapsed lung and second-and third-degree burns over 22 percent of her body. Her final reach for the door knob during the fire cost Iris much of her right hand, and her burns required skin grafts and rehabilitation.
Over the years, she’s learned to use her “paw” to do things and get around. Her loss of mobility has had a major effect on her tennis, but she hasn’t given up on herself and for others facing similar challenges. She has worked with the engineering school at Northwestern University to develop custom made tools, such as tennis rackets and typing mechanisms. Of course, nothing is the same as having a full hand, but Iris gets by.
“I only lost fingers. Many burn survivors are far more challenged, and many never make it through a fire,”
Iris says. “I may have been a victim, but I chose to survive.” www.firesprinklerinitiative.org/faces

In addition to her work at Northwestern University, Iris is a motivational speaker. She doing well, despite her injuries from the fire, and can still look back on the irony of event. That evening before she went to bed, Iris was reading Touched by Fire .
ABOUT “FACES OF FIRE”
“Faces of Fire” is a project of the National Fire Protection Association funded by a Federal Emergency
Management Agency Fire Prevention and Safety Grant. The campaign is a tool to help people and groups across the country promote the use of automatic fire sprinklers in one- and two-family homes. By containing fires before they spread, home fire sprinklers protect lives and property. The personal stories told through the Faces of Fire campaign show the experiences of those who escaped or lost loved ones in home fires and those whose lives and property were protected by home fire sprinklers. www.firesprinklerinitiative.org/faces