A model who suffered burns on 96 percent of her body has reminded people you can 'achieve whatever you want' after she beat the odds to survive a freak accident.
Catrin Pugh, now 28, was given just a one in 1,000 chance of surviving after the tragic accident took place in 2013, when she was on board a coach to take her from the French Alps back to Britain.
She was sitting at the front of the coach beside her boyfriend at the time, Shaun, and travelling down a famously steep descent when she heard the driver say, "I've got no brakes."
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"You could feel the coach freewheeling, soaring," Catrin recalled later to the Mail Online. "There was screaming and shouting, people breaking windows, some managed to jump off."
The coach hurtled towards the cliff edge, but the driver managed to turn the wheel and crash the vehicle into some rocks. The impact caused the coach to go up in flames, leaving people rushing to escape.
"I don’t know how I got caught," Catrin, who now also works as a physiotherapist, said.
"I don’t have memories of seeing the fire. I felt it and I heard it hissing, fizzing. My memory is of crawling up the aisle, knowing I was on fire, then I feel like I lost the energy to keep going."
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Shaun carried Catrin off the coach while she was still ablaze, after which she remembered people 'stamping' on her to extinguish the flames.
She continued: "The pain of being on fire is very weird. It starts as an intense stinging, then dulls into numbness as it burns through all the layers of skin and the nerve endings. That numbness is a blessing, as I didn’t know how bad it was.
"Everyone was looking at me, eyes wide. The firefighters arrived, the paramedics, and they looked so shocked, no one really knew what to do. I remember lifting my arm and thinking, “Where’s my skin gone?”"
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Catrin was taken to hospital and put in an induced coma before being flown back to England, where she was admitted to the specialist burns unit at Whiston Hospital, Merseyside. There, her parents were told that their daughter had a one in 1,000 chance of surviving.
She remained in hospital for almost three months and 200 procedures, and likened herself to a 'patchwork quilt' when she saw her skin for the first time afterwards.
Catrin faced a long and painful recovery involving physiotherapy, but connecting with charities taught her she could still have the future she wanted.
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She got into motivational speaking and advocating on behalf of charities for people with burns or who are 'visibly different', as well as beginning her own career as a physiotherapist in burns rehab.
A decade on from the accident, Catrin is now single and dating when she has the time, juggling a love life with her work, friends and trips back to the French Alps to ski.
Emily Brown