High windows a threat to children, rescuers warn:
Plano Star Courier by: Shannon Womble
High windows a threat to children, rescuers warn:
Dan Burks, Plano Fire Apparatus Operator and paramedic, said
he always will remember administering emergency treatment to a young child who had tumbled
from a second-story window.
"It is the kind of thing that sticks with you," the
Plano Fire Department veteran said. "The first time we saw this was like eight or
nine months ago -- and then it happened twice in a row."
Burks and other fire department officials are concerned about
the recent number of children who have accidentally fallen from high windows and fear it
could easily happen again.
On May 3, emergency personnel responded to a call for a child
who had fallen from a window onto a grassy lawn.
Two weeks later, paramedics treated a 3-year-old female who
had fallen from a second-story window and landed on a stone porch patio.
"We transported her to Columbia Medical Center of Plano
with life-threatening injuries," said Monique Cardwell, fire department spokeswoman.
"This is something that just sticks out in your mind. Parents need to be
careful."
May 31, just four days after the 3-year-old fell, emergency
personnel were called to a home where a 4-year-old boy plunged from a window onto a
concrete patio.
Cardwell said the boy had been released from doctors' care
after treatment at two local hospitals.
The parents of the children declined to comment. Police did
not file charges in the incidents.
"Kids are just going right through the screens,"
she said. "This kind of problem is happening with the new style of window -- those
that are a foot off the floor."
Paramedics say children who fall out of windows most commonly
receive very serious head injuries.
"Parents need to remember that screens are flimsy,"
Burks said. "They are designed to keep insects out and not to keep kids in."
He did suggest keeping second-story windows closed when young
children are upstairs, or building some kind of sturdy barricade across the lower part of
the screen if windows must be opened.
"The injuries are severe (when a child falls out of a
window)," Cardwell said. Parents need to be aware that this kind of thing can
happen."
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