Burns

Your house's plumbing after a pipe bursts

Imagine a water pipe in your wall ruptures from heat. The pressurized water (blood plasma) gushes out into the drywall and floor (tissue spaces), leaving less water in the pipes themselves (hypovolemia). The walls swell and expand from the water, squeezing tighter around the pipes and any wires (nerves and vessels) stuck inside them—just like compartment syndrome. Meanwhile, the hole in the pipe is now an open drain to the outside, so you lose your supply constantly (evaporative fluid loss) and dirt blows in (infection). Your water pressure (blood pressure) drops because the system is leaking faster than the main can refill it. Your body's answer is to speed up the pump (heart rate increases) and squeeze the pipes in less important rooms (vasoconstriction to skin and gut) to keep the critical rooms (brain, heart) supplied—but this compensation only works until the leak is too big, and then the whole system crashes.