Everyone likes toys. Firefighters are known globally for their love of big kid toys. If it’s new, we’ve got to have one (at least). Even with bad toys you can usually come up with something good to say about them. But some novelties, marketed like toys, are causing quite a ruckus in the fire service community. So much so in fact that during National Arson Awareness Week, the United States Fire Administration is focusing on a toy novelty that kids are finding more than a little attractive. The theme for this year’s Arson Awareness Week, which runs from today until this weekend, is “Toylike Lighters – Playing with Fire.”They’re out there and they look innocent. They look like little $0.50 trinkets from a supermarket gumball machine. That cute doggie she has her diary key on… That toy skateboard your son is doing finger tricks with, could in actuality be a butane lighter.
These things are causing fires at unprecedented rates for new fire starting devices. In fact, it’s so bad that the National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS) is collecting fire cause data specifically focusing on fires started with toy novelty lighters. Data already proves that children using lighters cause as many fires as matches. In fact, some studies have shown that lighters are the preferred ignition source.
Now you might not even be able to tell that you child is in possession of a lighter.
Who would ever expect a skateboard that makes fire? Lighters that look like a butterfly or a poker chip are out there where our kids can put their hands on them.
Fires caused by children playing with fire starting devices are called child-play fires. This is the technical term. Most kids that start fires, indeed a great majority of them, had no intention of harming anyone or anything beyond what they burned initially. Kids have a really hard time understanding the dynamics of combustion, and the speed of fire spread, especially when combustibles are nearby. In 2002 there were approximately 13,900 fires started by kids playing with fire. That’s a one-year total. Those fires caused $339 million in direct damage, 1,250 civilian injuries, and sadly 210 civilian fire deaths (many times to themselves or family members). Another thing that adults don’t often know is that the median age (average) of the juvenile fire setter is 5 years-old. That’s no typo. Even worse, the median age for fatal fire victims of child-play fires is 4 years old. They’re killing their peers. The median age for injuries in nonfatal juvenile arson fires is the middle to late teens. So it’s the little ones that pay the ultimate price when little kids start fires.
I encourage all of my readers to visit this site: http://www.usfa.dhs.gov/fireservice/subjects/arson/arson_awareness.shtm
Print out the Arson Awareness Week Media Kit and share it with your schools and nursery schools! That’s right, the nursery school moms and dads need to know and share this information.
There can be no question about fire’s attraction to kids. As we become more technologically advanced, it seems that kids are even more drawn to fire. Perhaps it is that our society has become so sterile that our children don’t really learn how important it is to fear and stay away from fire. They don’t have to empty the coal pail as our forebearers did. As if we already didn’t have enough to do, now we have to double check our children’s toys. Make sure there’s not a torch in the toybox next to the toy fire extinguisher… or is it?
