Mum’s child deathtraps

By Sarah Schwager
LOCAL emergency authorities have banded together this summer to warn people of the risks of leaving a child in the car even for a few minutes.
Pakenham Acting Senior Sergeant Steve Lewis said it only took a few minutes for a child to dehydrate in a hot car and that leaving a child locked in the car even for a short period was an offence against the Child and Young Persons Act.
“We will contact the Department of Human Services as a welfare issue and the driver can be prosecuted,” Mr Lewis said.
But he said the main concern was the health of the child.
“It happens more often than we like,” he said.
In the last year, RACV patrols were called out 1352 times to rescue people locked in cars, more than three times a day on average.
RACV chief engineer of vehicles Michael Case, said people locked in cars during the summer period were at great risk of suffering or even dying due to heat stroke or dehydration.
“The interior temperature of a car can rise by as much as 40 degrees in just 15 minutes,” Mr Case said.
“Even dashing into the shops is dangerous.
“Leaving a window open a few centimetres won’t help reduce a car’s interior heat by much and temperatures can reach a lethal 60 degrees very quickly.”
CFA Pakenham volunteer Kylie Rosier said they had an average of a couple of reported incidents a week.
“All of a sudden we will have a spate of them,” Ms Rosier said.
“On hotter days this is a major health issue.”
SES Pakenham unit controller Andrew Graham said the problem was very serious, especially this time of year.
He said they had had two incidents last week where a parent had accidentally locked the keys in the car with the child in it.
“Thankfully they were accidental and the outcome was okay,” Mr Graham said.
“For the people who do it purposefully, who go into a store for five minutes which turns into 10 or 20 minutes, their kids will be dead.” Metropolitan Ambulance Service’s Pakenham team manager Simon Thompson said emergency workers would not hesitate to break a car window or force the door open to get to a child.
“We don’t hesitate to break into the car if the child is in danger,” Mr Thompson said.
“On hot days the car will just keep heating up like an oven.”
Kidsafe, the Child Accident Prevention Foundation of Australia, Victoria manager Anne Murphy urged parents to always take kids out of the car with them, even if it was only for a small errand.
Ms Murphy said cars could reach as much as 30 to 40 degrees hotter than the outside temperature, with 75 per cent of the increase occurring within the first five minutes.
She said while there had been few reported incidents over the previous couple of weeks, parents returning to work while the kids were still on holidays tended to be a bit more stressed and get lazy.
“Don’t use the car as a babysitter,” Ms Murphy said.
Mr Lewis urged witnesses not to ignore the issue.
“If people see a child left in a car they need to call 000,” he said.