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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

More children dying in hot cars

Toll in 2010 highest since records have been kept

Allen G. Breed Associated Press

This year of record temperatures has also led to a record number of children dying in hot vehicles, according to a group that tracks such deaths.

According to the Kansas-based organization Kids and Cars, 48 children have died of hyperthermia after being left or becoming trapped in a hot car or truck. The previous record of 47 was set in 2005, says Janette Fennell, the group’s founder and president.

“I’m devastated,” Fennell said Wednesday.

The latest death was a 2 1/2-month-old girl who died Sept. 20 in Kingman, Ariz., after being left five hours in a car in 100-degree heat. Police say the girl’s father forgot the baby was in the car, went inside the house and took a shower and nap.

Fennell had waited until the results of an autopsy on two Kentucky brothers before declaring this a record year. The two boys, ages 4 and 6, died Aug. 6 after apparently climbing into their family’s pickup truck, but the cause of death was not released until this week, Kentucky State Police Detective Scott Skaggs said Wednesday.

“Everything looks like right now that they got in the car themselves,” Skaggs said. No charges have been filed in the case.

Jan Null, an adjunct professor of meteorology at San Francisco State University who also tracks these deaths, said it’s hard to say why deaths spiked this year; there were just 33 deaths in 2009, which also was a hot year. He noted that the Kentucky deaths did not occur on a record hot day.

“I think from the small 13-year sample that we have that probably from a statistical basis, this is within the range of what you would expect,” he said. “It’s impossible, I think, to associate it with the weather totally. Is weather a factor? It’s always a factor.”

Since 1998, an average of 37 children have died yearly in the United States after being left in or becoming trapped in a hot vehicle. According to Fennell’s statistics, Texas leads the nation with 13 deaths, followed by Florida with five, and Arizona, Georgia, Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee with three each.