Hot cars deadly risk for children

Deaths from heat stroke spur national safety campaign

By Jim Avila
NBC NEWS
July 12 — One of the great dangers of summer that every parent and caregiver needs to be aware of is leaving children in hot cars. Over the past five days, four children have died across the United States because they’ve been inside hot cars, left there on hot summer days with no way out, no one to help them. More often than not, the parents mean no harm, or the child climbed in without the parent’s knowing. How can you make sure it doesn’t happen in your family?

IN NORTHRIDGE, CALIF., an off-duty policeman squeezes a life-saving cup of water into a minivan back seat, where two children, one seven weeks old, the other 18 months, are crying in the hot sun. The mother arrives just before police break the car window to rescue them. “You mom? Is this your car?” asks the officer. “Why are your kids in the hot sun and why are you not with them?”
“I just went to buy something for them,” says the mother.
“Do you realize it’s hot in there?” asks the officer.
The children survive and their mother is jailed, charged with two counts of felony child abuse.

Wednesday in suburban Dallas, Texas, a 3-year-old dies of heat stroke when he locks himself in the car. The same day in Mooresville, N.C., a father on the way to work accidentally leaves his 6-month-old in his car instead of dropping the child off at daycare.

And in Minneapolis Tuesday, a 4-month-old dies when his father forgets to drop him off at daycare, leaving him to suffer heat stroke in the car seat of the minivan.
“It was obvious to even me that the baby was not alive,” says Dean Koontz, who was a witness.

It’s a critical situation with 39 deaths this year, up from the yearly average of 30. Even on a mild day — at 73 degrees in Chicago Wednesday — an SUV can heat up to 100 degrees in 10 minutes, to 120 in just 30 minutes.

In Naples, Fla., Thursday, Dr. Obed Bar-or, a pediatrician and researcher at Canada’s McMaster’s University, conducts experiments on super-heated parked cars.

“People who are inside that car start suffering within very few minutes,” says Dr. Bar-or. If the outside temperature is 90 degrees, it could be 160 degrees inside the vehicle.

Dr. Bar-or’s first study last October used college students to measure how much heat humans can take.
The study was sponsored by General Motors, which is developing a low energy radar sensor that would be installed in the passenger compartment to monitor temperature and movement.
“It senses motion as minor as a 5-month-old child asleep, breathing in a rear facing child seat,” says GM’s Deborah Nowak-Vanderhoef.
The system will not be available until 2004, to combat the danger of the blazing sun taking young lives in America’s parking lots. For a video

-- Cherri (jessam6@home.com), July 25, 2001

Answers

God aloof

mute to

dead babies

-- (basho@frog.pond), July 25, 2001.

Have you ever tried to thaw frozen meat by putting it in a bowl of hot water? It takes quite a while to thaw meat that way, even if the water is replaced often. Today I took a frozen 5-lb oblong chunk of hamburger meat out to the solar oven car. I put it in a metal bowl in full sun. The outside air temp was 95 F. The meat was fully thawed to the core, the outer layer of meat was starting to cook, and the package was very warm to the touch when I took it out of the car -- less than 2 hours later. 30 minutes or less is all it takes to kill a baby in a hot car.

-- helen (oven@mitts.required), July 25, 2001.

I dunno know if it's a dumbing down thing or too many rats in a cage syndrome or what. Each of these tragedies reminds of watching a fella die of heat stroke. Lousy death.

-- Carlos (riffraff@cybertime.net), July 26, 2001.