Four months after leaving the devastation of her Espinho (Braga) home on foot, mother-of-two Sandra Oliveira has died of the injuries she received in a freak gas blast that killed her husband and badly injured both the couple’s children.
The tragic end to a battle already steeped in tragedy came on Monday evening in Hospital São João de Porto where Sandra Oliveira had been interned with 80% burns since April 14.
Her two children, Gino, aged nine, and Pedro Miguel, aged 14, remain in the same hospital, slowly recovering from the 65% burns they received in the blast.
According to newspaper reports, both boys are progressing “favourably” and may even be released later this month.
Blasting News – the “fully independent social journalism” site – is the only source that appears to have covered the sad postscript to this story in any detail, describing the sorrow now of neighbours whose thoughts lie with the two boys made orphans.
As many papers reported back in April, the children’s father João saved the children by carrying them to safety before collapsing from his own injuries and dying the next day in hospital.
“Those children are alive thanks to him,” José Pereira told BN, which reveals that the boys spent “50 days in coma” after the blast which was of such force that “even Pedro’s glasses melted”.
Sandra Oliveira was buried alongside her husband in Espinho cemetery yesterday (Wednesday).
As intimated at the time, all indications are that the blast was an accident caused by one gas ring remaining on after the family’s supper the night before (click here Hero dad dies after rescuing children from Braga gas blast)
