The scars on his body and the questions in his mind lead Travis Clyde to be thankful he’s alive.
Four months ago, a July 18 explosion left him unconscious for hours, lying on the ground at his Jeffrey City ranch. Maybe it was the rain that woke him enough to cause him to stumble with third- and fourth-degree burns into his home and bed where two of his children found him.
“It was six hours they figured from time it happened till they got home,” Clyde said. “You look at it and think about it and everything. It’s a pretty humbling experience knowing that I am still here.”
Clyde spent about six weeks in a Salt Lake City hospital burn unit with major burns on his left arm, abdomen and left leg. The explosion that sent him there left him with his brain bleeding and an air pocket in his head, he said.
He doesn’t remember the incident except that he recollects going to clean and weld a slip tank for gasoline that typically sat in the back of a pickup because it had a leak.
“Apparently I decided to weld on it when I shouldn’t have been,” he said. “I don’t remember moving the tractor or getting the welder out. I don’t know why I did it that way and the way that it happened wouldn’t have happened if I would have done it right.”
Clyde said in the past, he would fill the gas tank with water to remove any fumes and gas residue that might cause an explosion.
“For whatever reason, I did not do that,” he said.
Clyde said if his children had not shown up when they did, his story may have taken another turn.
As it was, he was put into a pickup and the family drove him to a Sweetwater County ambulance at its station about 20 minutes from their home.
The Journey
An ambulance ride to the emergency room at SageWest Health Care in Lander resulted in an assessment that determined he needed to be airlifted to the University of Utah’s Intermountain Burn Center in Salt Lake City.
But the Jeffrey City rancher said his recovery went faster than the medical experts at the Salt Lake City hospital expected. He was given skin grafts and was able to skip a surgery that initially had been planned. Clyde was released from the hospital just before Labor Day.
Since his release, Clyde said some of the skin grafts are tightening up and he goes to physical therapy in Lander to help him regain some of the range of motion he had before the blast. His left arm muscles were damaged by the burns and he’s working at regaining some of the strength he lost.
“There’re things I can’t do and I don’t have the strength. But as far as healing, it’s going really well,” he said.
Clyde said he has an appointment in Salt Lake City with his doctors in the coming week to check on his progress. He credits the hospital with doing a “phenomenal job” with his burns and struggles for the most part now with some short-term memory issues that are the result of his head trauma.
“Not being able to remember stuff is tough, but everybody puts up with me,” he said.
As part of his recovery from severe burns, Travis Clyde’s family reports he has had three surgeries. (Courtesy Clyde Family) 
Travis Clyde, left, runs cattle in the Red Desert area. He was severely burned as he was welding a tank at on his Jeffrey City property on July 18. (Courtesy Clyde Family) 
Travis Clyde continues to undergo therapy and treatment at the University of Utah Burn Center. (Courtesy Google Earth)
Supervising
Clyde said this fall he has been the “supervisor” from a pickup for family efforts to bring in the 800 to 1,000 cattle that they care for on area ranges during the summer. He also has gotten back in the saddle but can’t stay there for long periods of time like he used to.
The family makes a living through ranching and caring for their own and other ranchers’ cattle, especially during the summer months.
Clyde said he and his wife, Mindy, are grateful for the outpouring of support that they received through the ordeal. A fundraiser for the family by friends and relatives brought in more than $100,000 to help with medical bills and other costs due to the incident.
“I want to thank everybody for their prayers and everything that everybody did,” he said. “We’ve just had an outpouring. We’ve got a stack of cards and … phone calls, (and) it’s pretty amazing because I’m out here and don’t communicate much with anybody. We just kind of got our own thing going on.”
As he looks to the future, Clyde said there may be some limitation to what he can do, but he is hopeful that he will get back physically close to where he was before the incident. He said he still gets tired and because of the muscle loss in his left arm he tells people that “my arm needs a nap.”
Looking back at the explosion, he laughed and said the main lesson he’s learned is “don’t be dumb, don’t do stupid stuff.”
“What I’ve told my kids since this happened is pay attention to what you are doing,” Clyde said. “I don’t remember doing it and I knew better. So, whatever caused it to happen, I tried to tell the kids, just pay attention and don’t be dumb. I’m pretty meticulous about everything and just the fact that it happened, it’s kind of tough for me to wrap my head around.”
Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.
