With the way that small children manage to get into everything, adults must be extra vigilant and careful when it comes to both fire safety and burn safety when kids are present. Two stories from this past week make this point very clearly. First, in northwest Florida, Meigs County police…
In a blog post on April 26, we wrote about young kids from other countries who were getting life-altering surgery here in the United States to save them from a life of pain and disfigurement from severe burns. Well, here is another such example, which is good news for a…
In a town called Granby in upstate New York, a man was seriously burned last week when he simply placed meat carelessly into a hot pan. Granby Center Fire Chief Donald LaBarge said the man was cooking inside his mobile home when he tossed more meat into the pan. Flames…
Here are two stories from this past week that should provide lessons about paying close attention to anything around the home that can cause a fire, or which can make your escape from a fire more difficult First: On April 20, the Consumer Product Safety Commission ordered the recall of…
This month, a young Iraqi boy disfigured by a car bomb in Iraq came to Long Island, NY for surgery that could give him a chance at a normal life. Zeenabdeen Hadi, now four years old, was barely a year old when the blast burned part of his face down…
The CBS television station in Keller, Texas reported last week on this story of severe burns on one family’s child and several other children, all of whom are in a special-needs class at their school: Nicholas Chaney’s parents trusted that he’s taken care of at school just like he is…
An interesting, though very academic, paper was published recently about the ways that investigators can measure how quickly skin can receive painful second-degree burns as well as far more damaging third-degree burns from coming in contact different surfaces. At the top of the list of fast skin-burning surfaces was aluminum,…
An article written for the Associated Press this past week covered a topic that every head of a household should know something about: A regulation calling for homes built after January 1, 2011 to install fire sprinklers. This rule in some areas has ignited a fight around the country between…
Here are three items that were in the news last week that provide good lessons for anyone–but especially families–as they examine their home for fire hazards, and also to make sure their fire-escape plans are known by everyone in the family. First, New York city fire officials say a lumbering…
Researchers at Victoria University in Melbourne, Australia conducted a study among school-age children to see how effective a smoke detector was in waking them up in the event of fire. Unfortunately, the results were frightening, and a serious wake-up call for parents, firefighters, and to fire-safety educators alike. The study,…