Rule on Child-Resistant Lighters Credited for Drop in Fire Deaths

NEW YORK — Those child-resistant cigarette lighters that smokers sometimes curse for their complexity have contributed to a nationwide plunge in the number of lives lost in fires set by children, experts say, though thousands of illegal lighters imported from China through California still find their way to market.

Despite a ghastly flurry of deaths in fires nationwide this holiday season, the National Fire Protection Assn., after a recent analysis of fire mortality statistics, said the number of people in the U.S. killed by children playing with fire dropped from 409 in 1994 to 279 two years later.

The group’s chief researcher, John Hall, credited the decline to the federal rule enacted in 1994 that required a certain amount of mechanical reasoning to ignite most cigarette lighters. Of all the ways that children play with fire, the most substantial drop was in the biggest trouble area: deaths caused by kids horsing around with cheap plastic lighters.

“It has had a very dramatic effect,” Hall said from the group’s offices in Quincy, Mass.

Children playing with fire is the fifth-leading cause of household fire deaths. Smoking is No. 1, followed by arson, heating mishaps and faulty electrical wiring, the association said.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission is trying to require child-resistant features on so-called multipurpose butane lighters used to ignite grills, fireplaces and pilot lights. A hearing is scheduled Jan. 14 in Washington to determine whether to add to the proposed rule the miniature soldering torches sold in department stores.

Some proponents of child safety devices on firearms have cited the cigarette lighter standards as an example of the effectiveness of making dangerous items harder for kids to handle.

Hall’s observations about the effect of the lighter law came amid a seasonal outbreak of particularly heart-rending fires that devastated several families.

Among the most dreadful disasters:

* Five people, including a 6-year-old and a 3-year-old, died in a fire that broke out in a Grand Rapids, Mich., home Wednesday. Fire investigators said the younger child had been playing with a cigarette lighter. Fire investigator Pablo Martinez said it’s unclear whether the lighter, which hadn’t been located, had a child-resistant feature.

* Two people died Wednesday in Oshkosh, Wis., in a fire investigators said was caused by an 11-year-old boy playing with a lighter.

* Six children were killed in a fire in Detroit last Sunday, while their mother, Fremeka Osteen, was in a hospital having a baby. Authorities suspect a child may have started a fire from a gas fireplace.

* Six family members died in a townhouse fire in Dale City, Va., on Christmas Day. The cause is still not known.

Local news media have focused on the fact that the number of child fire fatalities in Detroit had nearly doubled from the previous year. City Fire Marshal Carleton Smith said the disparity was more the result of a statistical cluster than a trend. “We consider it a fluke. A bad roll of the dice.”

The National Fire Protection Assn.’s ongoing study of children and fire shows that the number of people who died in fires caused by children playing with lighters dropped from 209 in 1994 to 115 two years later. Though Hall said the drop was substantial, it falls short of the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s own promise that the lighter rule would save 80 to 105 lives a year.

The number of children who died in fires in which somebody was playing with matches also dropped during that period, from 130 to 76. Other categories fell only slightly. Hall speculated that the increased awareness caused by the lighter law prompted many parents to also be vigilant about policing matches.

The current lighter law only applies to cheap, disposable models; refillable lighters and disposables that cost more than a few dollars are exempt, Consumer Product Safety Commission spokesman Ken Giles said. He said the commission works with U.S. Customs agents to monitor imports of lighters, but the commission’s recall notices indicate that millions of these lighters make it to convenience stores and gas stations nationwide before the importers are stopped.

The large majority of the recalled lighters had been imported by California firms and distributed to stores as far away as Puerto Rico. In April, for example, ERA Intermarketing of the City of Industry agreed to a recall of 840,000 lighters; DB Marketing Group of El Monte several months earlier agreed to a recall of 790,000 Chinese lighters.

In November 1997, Yongxin International Inc. of the City of Industry agreed to pay a $50,000 fine for importing more than 140,000 lighters without child-safety mechanisms, which was discovered before they were sold.

“You go to any store and you see those,” Grand Rapids fire investigator Martinez said of lighters without child-safety features. “A lot of them are attractive for kids. They are made to look like toys.”

Giles said the commission gets numerous complaints about illegal lighters but often finds that the child-safety device is so easy for adults to use that people assume it isn’t there. To qualify as child resistant, a lighter has to confound 85% of a test sample of children.

Individual tragedies notwithstanding, fires overall have plunged considerably over the decades, in part because of laws requiring smoke detectors in homes. As recently as 1978, more than 6,000 people died in house fires every year, compared with 3,360 in 1997, which was down nearly 17% from the previous year.

Yet roughly 37% of the house fires that occur in an average year take place from December through February. Hall attributed this to the more frequent use of auxiliary heaters, which sometimes go awry. Detroit Fire Marshal Smith thinks that kids kept indoors while home from school for the holidays often get into more mischief.

Children under the age of 6 have twice as much chance of dying in a house fire than the rest of the population, Hall said. After that, the incidence drops dramatically, then begins to climb for people in their 20s. By their mid-80s, people are four times as likely to die in a house fire.

Many of this season’s fires occurred in poorer neighborhoods, and studies have shown parallels between fire fatalities and income and education levels. States with the highest percentage of poor, uneducated people consistently dominate the top states for incidence of fire deaths, with high rates of smoking and drinking also factors, Hall said.

Though fires in big cities get more publicity, especially if the flames are still visible when TV news crews arrive, Hall said rural areas statistically have the highest incidence of fire deaths. The chances of dying in a fire in poor, rural Mississippi are nearly five times as great as in California, which, according to the most recent statistics, was 46th in the nation in fire deaths.