SEATTLE — While her teenage stepson watched her young kids in her living room earlier this month, Chelsea Nelson took a short break in her adjacent bedroom. Then she heard a loud bang. She came out and saw her stepson “with terror in his face.”
Her kids — 2-year-old Jamari and 5-year-old Aliviah — had climbed their couch, pushed through an open window, and fallen from their third-story apartment. She rushed to the balcony, saw them below and ran out of her apartment.
“It was almost like a nightmare, you know, where those staircases just feel like they’re never ending,” Nelson said.
She found her daughter unconscious and bloodied. Her son was knocked out too, but woke up crying soon after she got to them.
“No parent deserves to have to go through that. Nobody wants to see their child like that,” she said.
As a heat wave engulfs a large section of the United States, doctors and firefighters are sounding an alarm on an old and stubborn foe: kids falling from windows.
Between 3,500 and 5,000 kids, usually between 2 and 5 years old, fall from windows annually in the United States, said Dr. Brian D. Johnston of UW Medicine.
Just last week, a toddler died after falling 15 stories in Chicago when he broke through a window screen.
“It’s tragic, partly because the injuries can often be severe, even devastating, partly because families are so shaken up by it. Most parents didn’t realize that this is something that could even happen. And partly because we know these are preventable injuries,” Johnston said.
In the Pacific Northwest, where use of air conditioning remains relatively low, falls from windows spike in summer. The region is facing temperatures topping 100 this week.
“We’re just bracing for those next window falls to happen,” said Shawneri Guzman, community outreach coordinator for South County Fire, one of the agencies that responded to Nelson’s 911 call.
In Snohomish County where Nelson lives, there were a record 22 falls in 2021 when the region saw record breaking temperatures driven by climate change.
This year, there have been 7 falls so far. Guzman credits that to a much cooler spring and early summer.
But there has been a slight increase in kid falls as summers in the Seattle-area get warmer, said Johnston. But he added that’s being mitigated by increased use of air conditioning.
Officials say steps to keep kids away from windows include getting stoppers so that a window doesn’t open more than 4 inches, moving furniture away from windows and constant supervision.
Johnston said he’s like to see kid safe window screens be required for new construction and remodels. These screens can withstand more than the 5 pounds of pressure regular insect screens hold.
Guzman and Nelson said what saved the kids was hitting an awning below them and landing on landscaping mulch below that.
Days after their fall, both kids still have scratches healing on their faces. But Nelson said they’re mostly back to normal. Olivia felt good enough to ride her scooter the day she got back from the hospital. She has follow-ups with doctors to make sure her brain is healing well.
“I’m talking to anybody that will listen because I had no idea. I had no idea what a windows stop was. I had no idea what window guards were,” she said. “I didn’t know that I could …….
Source: https://www.columbian.com/news/2022/jul/28/authorities-warn-about-open-windows-and-kids/