I need help, shorted wire, fire, fixable? Options

[6strngs]

well, as some of you know I pulled my transmission out to replace the rear main seal. Well, I was doing the final stuff today, and I go to put my battery in, and I put the positive on, but as soon as I try to put the negative on, it sparks, alot. it usually never does that so I was a bit concerned. I went and asked my dad who is an electrical engineer with a PHD, if anybody knows anything about electricity, it should be him. anyway, he tried, and it sparked, but he just forced it on and it stopped sparking... hmm... he said it probably just had some electrical current built up it needed to ground and it'd be fine now. so I go to start it up and... nothing... some noise that sounds like a motor whirring, but that's it. we're trying to figure it out, knowing it's probably something electrical, when I see that my friend who was helping me hadn't tightened down this one nut that is for that cable (ground cable, I thought) that has a plastic cover over it that goes on the started. so I go to tighten it, and as soon as I do it starts sparking, so I let go and hit the ratchet till it comes off, but then it starts to glow red and smoke in that area, so my friend is trying to pull the battery cable off while I'm frantically searching for a fire extinguisher. well, I ended up burning my hands trying to get the negative cable off, and eventually I pulled the post right out of the battery. anyway, now all the wiring in the area is all charred up, but it's only in that area, I don't know how much damage has been done and I don't know if it's fixable or how I could go about fixing it. I'm going to include some pictures, but could somebody tell me if this is fixable and how hard it's going to be?

I'm kinda just happy to be alive, my dad said that there was probably enough amps flowing through that circuit to kill me about 100 times over... but it still sucks cause now I'm still without my celica and I don't even know where to start this time...

x 1000

[6strngs]

here's the pics. they really suck cause my camera sucks and you can't really tell how bad the wires are. but I tried:
here's what started it all:

here's my negative batter cable. the terminal from the battery is still in there, and the insulation completely melted off one wire and all the copper wire is exposed.

hard to see the melted looms. I don't know the condition of the wires inside, but the plastic wrap is all melted

probably the best picture to see the damage

[MaskedMan]

yeah good thing your ok. sounds like you hooked up a positive wire to a direct ground. Well you didn't damaged anything mechanical, so at worse it's going to be the price of a new wiring harness. Or depending on how fried your wires are, you may be able to replace only the fried wires if your good with wiring, but those wires look pretty crispy to me.

[coldbluesteel]

Man... Glad you are alright.
To tell you the truth you could of fried everything electrical in your car. Start off by checking fuses, if they are blown you may be ok, I've seen them arc across with enough juice. If the fuse isn't blown or arced you got real lucky, ECU's are not cheap, neither are sensors. Then start pulling the shielding off the cables to see how far back the got burned, this all needs to be replaced. Maybe you got it off fast enough, it didn't get past the batt cables. I can't tell by the pics but check your relays too.

[MaskedMan]

Oh yeah, completely overlooked all that, it's been a long day. But hopefully all you lost is a bunch of fuses and a few wires.

[6strngs]

I didn't check all my fuses, but I checked a few important ones like my EFI and ECU fuses and they were all still intact. in fact, it seems like the big wire bunch that goes to the fuse box is still all ok, so maybe I just need to get a wiring harness and do some splicing.

[6strngs]

so, how hard is it to pull out the wiring harness and put a new one in?