Hot car deaths spur call for more safety efforts
Baytown baby was 2nd such fatality this year in state that tops deadly list
With the official start of summer still nearly two weeks away, the death of a 9-month-old baby left inside a hot truck in Baytown has brought renewed warnings from community leaders — and a new effort to remind parents and caregivers — not to leave children inside vehicles as temperatures rise.
So far this year, 12 children have died of heatstroke in vehicles across the country, including tiny Maria Solorio in Baytown, whose parents thought they had removed her from their truck. As temperatures outside soared to 91 degrees and the heat index reached 100 on June 4, Maria sat strapped inside. She died later at a hospital.
Maria was the second baby to die this year in Texas from the heat — a 6-month-old died in Eagle Pass in May after her father forgot to drop her off at day care.
The deaths — and the likelihood of deepening heat in the weeks ahead — prompted Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez and other local leaders Monday to announce the distribution of new hangtags for rearview mirrors to help remind distracted parents to check for their children. A billboard campaign is also expected throughout the Houston area.
“It was heartbreaking on many levels,” Gonzalez said Monday. “We at the Harris County Sheriff’s Office do not want any other families to endure the grief brought on by such a preventable tragedy.”
Parents on ‘autopilot’
Texas leads the nation in hot car deaths for children, with 118 deaths among the 754 reported since 1998, according to the National Safety Council.
The sheriff’s office will distribute the hangtags — which feature the warning, “Before you LOCK LOOK” — and reminders on how to prevent hot car deaths, Gonzalez said. The tags can be picked up at sheriff ’s office storefronts.
The hangtags could save a child’s life, said James Green, founder of Got Child?, a nonprofit that sells hangtags.
“We can’t cut their lives short,” Green said. “We need to get these hangtags out; we need to prevent hot car deaths.”
Since the death in Baytown, there have been two additional deaths of children left in hot cars — a 7-month-old in Raleigh, N.C., and a 2-year-old in Crittenden, Ky.
Children absorb heat at a more rapid pace than adults, making them more vulnerable to heat-related illness, said Sherri Onyiego, a physician with Harris County Public Health. The elderly and pets are also at risk.
“It only takes a very few minutes before something deadly can happen, especially in a hot environment such as a car,” Onyiego said.
Little Maria’s parents each thought the other had taken the child out of the vehicle after they returned home. Busy parents sometimes go on “autopilot,” the sheriff said.
Officials recommend that parents make a habit of always opening the car door to look in the back seat, or to keep an item such as a purse or phone in the back to remind them to check for children. Parents also are asked to keep car doors locked so children can’t sneak inside and to keep car keys out of reach.
Anyone who sees a child alone inside a car should call 911, officials said.
The official start of summer is June 21, and temperatures are expected to remain high in coming weeks. In the Houston area, highs are expected to remain in the 90s, though a slight chance for thunderstorms Tuesday through Friday could keep the temperatures from climbing any higher.
Officials are also watching a tropical wave in the Gulf of Mexico that has the potential to develop into a tropical disturbance.
‘Gasping for air’
First responders know just how hot it can get inside a vehicle in Houston.
Just two days before Maria died, the Harris County Sheriff ’s Office partnered with the CyFair Volunteer Fire Department to showcase the dangers firsthand.
Jacqueline Fortune — director of community engagement at the sheriff ’s office — a sergeant and paramedics from the Cy-Fair VFD locked themselves inside a vehicle outside a Home Depot in northwest Harris County on a hot Saturday.
The sergeant wore his full uniform, with a bulletproof vest, to replicate the constraints of a car seat.
After about 37 minutes, the group called off the demonstration. By the time they left the vehicle, the inside temperature had reached 147 degrees, Fortune said.
Some of them were visibly ill and had trouble speaking.
“I can tell you from being in the vehicle, from experience, my heart went out to anyone that has been left, especially a child,” Fortune said. “Imagine a baby inside of that vehicle all alone, with no one to talk to, no one to cry out for, gasping for air. It gets that intense.”