Baby, tot survive spell in hot car
Within 10 minutes, the temperature inside the car will increase 19 degrees, a study by the San Francisco State University found. After 20 minutes it jumps another 29 degrees.
That escalation in heat was demonstrated just last week when police say two young girls were left alone in the car on Moab's Main Street while their mother shopped. Police say the temperature inside the car measured as high as 170 degrees.
"At 103 down here it is really dry. Once things heat up inside a car, on these dashboards, it doesn't take long. It sucks the life out of you," said Moab Police Chief Mike Navarre.
The youngest child, a 7-week-old baby, had to be hospitalized and her 2-year-old sister also received medical treatment as a precaution. Both were taken into state custody following the Tuesday afternoon incident. The Grand County Attorney's Office is now screening child abuse charges against the 22-year-old woman, who remains jailed.
Officials say they are grateful for the intervention of passers-by who called 911 after spotting the children. The windows were rolled down, allowing them to get the children out of the car to a cooler area.
"We suspect they will be going home soon."
Others weren't so lucky.
The study said 15 children have died in the United States as of July 12 because they were left alone in hot cars. In all of 2006, there were 29 deaths.
Since 1998, an average of 36 child fatalities have happened per year in the United States due to the same reason. Overall, there have been 336 deaths of children documented since 1998 because of hyperthermia brought on by being in a hot car.
The study done by Jan Null, a consulting meteorologist, also looked at how quickly temperatures rose in enclosed cars on 16 dates during the summer of 2002. The study used a dark blue sedan with a medium-gray interior and found that within an hour, interior temperatures jumped an additional 45 degrees.
Cracking the window had little effect.
Utah has gone several years without such a death. Since 1998, six have been recorded, including five girls who died in the trunk of the same car on a hot August day in West Valley City. The girls — the youngest of whom was 2 — were two sets of sisters who were cousins and a constant playmate.
A separate study that analyzed 171 fatalities of young children determined that 39 percent had been "forgotten" by the caregiver, 27 percent were due to children playing in an unattended vehicle and another 20 percent were caused after the child was intentionally left in a vehicle by an adult.
In the West Valley incident, the girls climbed into the trunk and apparently pulled the latch shut. Since then, a national push by the victims' parents and others led automobile manufacturers to install interior trunk releases on models manufactured since 2002. For cars older than that, retrofit kits are available.
E-mail: amyjoi@desnews.com
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