Window-safety education can save lives, Modesto fire captain says

A careful line needs to be walked in educating children about windows and safety, said Modesto Fire Department Capt. Rusty Ehrler.

Windows – even second-story or higher – can be valuable lifesaving tools in the event of a fire, he said. The fire code requires any room to have a minimum of two entry-exit points, two escape routes, he said. “We don’t want to teach kids to never think about windows because they’re dangerous,” Ehrler said.

Basic fire safety education is “check the door for heat,” he said. “It it’s hot, there’s (the window), your secondary egress. If we tell them, ‘Never go to a window,’ they may perish in a fire when they could have very easily gotten out. I think that’s pretty important.”

But kids and the adults who look after them definitely need to understand the risks windows pose, he said.

The May 3 accident that resulted in the death of 1-year-old Kenzie Reth of Modesto was the second time in three days and the fourth time in nine months that a Stanislaus County child was reported to have fallen out of the window of a residence. The first two incidents occurred last year in Modesto and Riverbank.

In 2011, the journal Pediatrics reported that nearly 5,200 children are treated in hospital emergency departments each year after falling from windows. Some estimate that 15,000 kids a year are injured in such accidents. Those age 5 and younger are the most common group, Ehrler said.

Multistory apartment buildings frequently are the sites of such accidents, he said, but the risk also has grown as more two-story homes have been built to make a smaller footprint.

Education is the key to prevention, Ehrler said. Parents and other caregivers need to take a good look at areas of a home where children frequently play without always being supervised.

Some falls are freak accidents; some result from curiosity. “If there’s a bed next to a window and they’re jumping on their bed and they come off the bed wrong and hit the window, there’s a chance it could break and they could go out,” he said. “But if we put a dresser under a window, we’re creating a ladder, essentially.”

Children being naturally curious, they might hear something going on outside and climb up to see.

Adults understand the function of screens, he said, is to keep bugs out while letting air in. “To a child, they don’t understand the capabilities of a screen. While they’ve been able to lean against a window, perhaps, they may lean on that screen in the same respect and it may give way and they fall.”

Parents and other caregivers unsure of whether their homes are safe may contact the Fire Department. “If anybody calls a fire station and asks, ‘Could you come to my house?’ we definitely will,” Ehrler said. “We don’t want to speak as experts, but we would not hesitate to offer tips to make things safer.”

The department offers no certification that could be used by a day care or other commercial purpose, added Capt. Jesse Nicasio, “but whether you’re a business or a residence, call us out and we can give you an opinion on whether something’s a safe practice or an unsafe practice. Like, maybe you shouldn’t put the crib under the window.

“That’s one of the components I think the public doesn’t realize – we’re here not only when we’re punched out to a call, when a 911 call comes in. We’re here also for the preventive component of it. ... The more preventive we can get, the more it saves us on the tragedy and injury side.”

To request a home safety check, call the department’s main administrative line, 209-572-9590.

This story was originally published May 12, 2016 at 4:13 PM with the headline "Window-safety education can save lives, Modesto fire captain says."