Jay Leno shares accident details: 'My face caught on fire'

Jay Leno is sharing details about the shocking accident in which his face and upper body suffered severe burns last month when one of his vintage cars caught fire while he was working on it.

The comedian and former "Tonight Show" host, an automotive enthusiast who hosts the CNBC series "Jay Leno's Garage," said on NBC's "Today" show Wednesday that he and a friend, Dave Killackey, were working on a 1907 White brand "steam car" at the facility housing Leno's collection in the Los Angeles suburb of Burbank. Despite the name, steam cars often use a small amount of gasoline to fire the boiler that produces the steam that makes them run.

“The fuel line was clogged so I was underneath it. It sounded clogged, and I said, ‘Blow some air through the line,’ and so he did,” Leno, 72, said. “And suddenly, boom, I got a face full of gas. And then the pilot light jumped and my face caught on fire.”

He told Killackey, “Dave, I’m on fire,” which his friend initially disbelieved. “I said, ‘No, Dave, I'm on fire.’ ”

Killackey, Leno said, "pulled me out and jumped on top of me and kind of smothered the fire.”

Leno separately told People magazine in an interview posted Wednesday, "It felt exactly like my face was on fire," calling it "like the most intense sunburn you've ever had …” Avoiding panic, he closed his eyes and held his breath. "I knew if I breathed in I could scorch my lungs," he said. "I was under the car maybe 10 seconds before Dave pulled me out. Any longer than that I could have lost my eye."

Leno put cold water on his face while Killackey called 911. But despite paramedics' advice to admit himself to a hospital burn unit, Leno instead drove home. "My wife [Mavis Leno] doesn’t drive anymore and I didn’t want her stuck and not knowing what was going on,” he said on "Today." “It just seemed like the right thing to do and I think it was.”

Relenting at his wife’s insistence, Leno spent nine days at the Grossman Burn Center at West Hills Hospital, with treatment that included skin grafts and eight hours daily in a hyperbaric chamber, a standard burn treatment in which concentrated oxygen helps skin heal. "[John] Travolta sent me a big Italian basket" as a get-well gift, he told People. "Tom Selleck sent flowers and Russell Crowe called from Australia. I've been in this business a long time and to feel that love was really touching." President Joe Biden also called to wish him well, Leno said on "Today."

Within a week after leaving the burn center, Leno was performing stand-up at the Comedy & Magic Club in Hermosa Beach, California. "It kind of gave my career a shot in the arm," he joked to People, "because it's like, ‘Let's go see him before he burns up again.’ … It was really fun to be back at work again."