{"id":487743,"date":"2026-06-07T16:03:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-07T16:03:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/487743\/"},"modified":"2026-06-07T16:03:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-07T16:03:11","slug":"popular-photographer-suffers-serious-injury-in-freak-accident","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/487743\/","title":{"rendered":"Popular photographer suffers serious injury in “freak” accident"},"content":{"rendered":"

A popular photographer from Donegal says he has suffered a serious hand injury following a freak accident at his home earlier this week.<\/p>\n

Falcarragh man James O’Donnell has risen to international prominence online for his striking photography featuring his dogs, Frida and Iggy.<\/p>\n

However, he has revealed that he suffered severe burns after his log fire in his dining room exploded.<\/p>\n

“On Wednesday, myself and Frida had just settled in for the night and I had a nice log fire going,” James said as he bravely told his story via social media.<\/p>\n

“I went to the kitchen to get water and walking back through the dining room (my office\/studio), I saw that my small paper basket needed emptying so I brought it with me and tipped it into the fire. It just had the strips from peel & seal envelopes which make the bin look full. On to the fire they went and I sat back on the sofa with a to-do list on social media.”<\/p>\n

“As I began working, I noticed a strip on the hearth so I went over to put it in with the tongs. As I picked up the paper the fireplace *blew up* showering me and the carpet with hot coals.”<\/p>\n

Luckily his beloved dog Frida escaped without injury – but James himself was worse for wear after being struck by flaming-hot projectiles from his fire.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Frida visiting the iconic Mont Saint-Michel landmark. Image credit James O’Donnell.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

James O’Donnell Photography<\/p>\n

“I escaped lightly with a serious hand injury, as the projectile could have gone straight to my face or caught an artery,” James said.<\/p>\n

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“It was a horrific freak accident with a bang, a roar and blood pouring and flaming coals on the carpet, but I immediately got into action. Frida was okay, I rang my brother to come immediately and I tried to sort the hot coals with my hand bandaged up in paper towels.”<\/p>\n

“Joe arrived with Siobh\u00e1n and he worked on the coals while Siobh\u00e1n helped me and rang for an ambulance. I started going into shock as Siobh\u00e1n was talking to 999 but I still managed to instruct Joe that I needed a few days of clothing.”<\/p>\n

As the adrenaline wore off though, James’ condition worsened.<\/p>\n

After being seen to by the ambulance service and taken to Letterkenny University Hospital for initial treatment, it was decided that he needed specialist surgery in Galway.<\/p>\n

Remarkably, thanks to his sister Catherine he was in Galway just five and a half hours after the initial incident at around 11pm.<\/p>\n

“I started losing my voice, vision, consciousness and felt sick, but I kept talking to get through it. The ambulance was quick, Letterkenny involved x-ray\/orthopedics, but I had to get to Galway ASAP for surgery (thank you, Catherine.)”<\/p>\n

James believes that the culprit may have been a small closed plastic container, which was mistakenly placed in the fire along with the rest of the paper pile.<\/p>\n

“Fatigue is an issue with me and I believe that after drinking the contents of a small clear plastic turmeric shot bottle, I resealed it and mistakenly dropped it into the paper basket,” he said.<\/p>\n

“In the fire the bottle must have settled in behind the contents of the glowing fire and eventually exploded, pushing everything out.”<\/p>\n

Luckily despite suffering a serious burn injury, there is hope that James may have escaped lasting serious damage to his nerves and ligaments.<\/p>\n

“I meet Prof Kelly, who will hopefully give good news this Thursday, and we believe that I escaped serious damage (nerve\/ligaments, etc).”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A popular photographer from Donegal says he has suffered a serious hand injury following a freak accident at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":487744,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-487743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=487743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/487744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}