Son's death illustrates hot car risk
Healdsburg man warns public against leaving kids in vehicles
Published: Saturday, July 15, 2006 at 3:00 a.m.
Last Modified: Saturday, July 15, 2006 at 1:57 a.m.
Justin Paulsen was nearly overcome - the grief of his small son's death still fresh, still painful despite the passage of nearly two years.
Facts
VEHICLE RISKS
On a 77-degree day, a car in the sun can top 106 degrees inside in 20 minutes, leaving children inside susceptible
to hyperthermia.
VEHICLE RISKS TO CHILDREN
Since 2001, at least 671 U.S. children have died while left unattended in and around cars.
At least 199 of the deaths resulted from hyperthermia, which occurs when someone is overcome by extremely high temperatures. Hyperthermia, the leading cause of death of children in parked cars, killed 42 children last year nationwide.
Vehicle dangers to children include strangulation in seat belts, trunk entrapment, suffocation, fires, falls, crushing injuries from power windows and sunroofs, carbon monoxide poisoning, auto theft and abduction, and children being backed over or struck.
In a study of 171 heat-related fatalities from 1995 to 2002, 39% were forgotten by a caregiver, 27% involved children who gained access to unlocked cars and 20% were intentionally left in the vehicle by an adult.
The internal temperature of an enclosed car can reach 114 degrees even if it's only 77 degrees outside. A car's internal temperature can rise 19 degrees in 10 minutes and 29 degrees in 20 minutes. A cracked window makes very little difference.
A child's body temperature rises three to five times faster than an adult's.
Heatstroke occurs when the body's core temperature reaches 104 degrees Fahrenheit; 107 degrees is usually fatal.
State law makes it a crime to leave children 6 or younger alone in a car.
Source: Kids In Cars; Jan Null, Golden Gate Weather Services; Sonoma County Department of Health Services; Boston University School of Public Health; Newton, Mass., Education Development Center
He was, he said, a reluctant spokesman, but admitted in a choked voice that he "didn't think it would be this hard" to talk about the day 2-year-old Liam succumbed to heat in his mother's locked minivan.
"I stand before you only because I feel so strongly about the issues we are discussing here today," he said at a Friday news conference. "It is my hope that my experience and newfound knowledge will help educate this community and prevent this terrible tragedy from occurring again."
Paulsen, 41, stood beside representatives from the Sonoma County Department of Health Services, the CHP and the county's Child Death Review Team to begin a campaign to educate the public about an often overlooked public safety issue: children left unattended in vehicles.
Liam and his then 4-year-old brother, Jaden Paulsen, were left in a vehicle in the driveway of their family's Healdsburg home for about eight hours by an alcoholic mother who passed out inside the house - "crawling distance" from their sweltering sons, her former husband said Friday.
The outside temperature reached 92 degrees that August day. Inside the van, authorities said, it would have been about 120.
While Jaden survived, he still suffers from the trauma of watching his brother die, his father said.
With the summer's hottest weeks approaching, Paulsen stood with law enforcement to discuss hyperthermia and other automobile-related dangers that have taken the lives of at least 671 U.S. children left unattended in and around cars since 2001.
Sometimes kids are left alone on purpose, perhaps by an adult who doesn't want to wake them or otherwise have the patience to wrestle with their child safety seat.
Other children climb into unlocked cars when no one is looking - a factor that played into the deaths of 46 children, or 27 percent, in a study of 171 hyperthermia deaths from 1995 to 2002.
The study's authors said 39 percent of the children who died were left in cars by caregivers who simply forgot them - a problem Beth Dadko, coordinator of the county's Safe Kids network, said drivers could remedy by leaving purses, briefcases, even shoes in the back seat to ensure they remember their passengers.
But officials said the primary solution is to understand the risks, pay close attention and resist, for instance, the urge to seek relief by allowing the kids to sit a spell in a DVD-equipped car.
"You know, it's not a baby sitter or a playground, (it's) a car," CHP Officer Barbara Upham said.
Paulsen said his ex-wife, Rena Corban, who is serving a seven-year sentence for her crime, used to use the van as a baby sitter, exposing the boys to many dangers of which he's become acutely aware since Liam's death.
During the long period of despair that followed, he sought solace in the Internet, s including a Web site dedicated to the problem of kids and motor vehicles called Kids In Cars.
Liam's Web site now has links to some of those sites as part of an effort to get more involved in the issue, support new bills and raise awareness.
"The damage has been done to my family," Paulsen said, "but it is not too late for others."
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