The
deaths of three children in a house fire in Bridlington, East Yorkshire,
probably caused by a discarded cigarette, were accidental, a coroner has ruled.
Maddie Hudson, three, William Beale, nine, and Anthony Fothergill, five, died
in a blaze which left their mother, Samantha Hudson, brain-damaged, an inquest
at Hull coroners' court heard.
(Guardian, 31
March 2011)
History
Linking tobacco smoking
and residential fires goes back to the history of modern civilization. For
example, Carolus Stephan and Johannes Libaldo, in their book A True
Description of the Noble Weed Nicotiana (1643), condemned smoking tobacco
as being not only injurious to the smoker’s health, but also highly dangerous
to the whole house, sometimes the whole village.
For example, on
August 26, 1642, in Görlitz, a town in Prussian Silesia, the whole of the
Nicholas district, including church and tower, and about a hundred houses, was
burned to the ground due to the fire initiated by a drunken smoker. Under
pressure of multiple disastrous fires, the Emperor Ferdinand III signed 16
August 1649 a law forbidding the sale, purchase, and use of tobacco everywhere,
requiring confiscation of the tobacco and the pipes.
Another law in
Saxony of 19 May 1653 pointed on a fire started out in the cellar of the town
hall in Dresden as the reason to outlaw smoking both in beer-houses and cellars,
forbidding selling tobacco by a doctor's prescription.
Modern Statistics
Fires cause 1% of the global burden of disease and 300,000
deaths per year worldwide. Smoking causes an estimated 30% of fire deaths in
the United States
In France, a single lighted cigarette thrown from a moving
car in 1999 ignited a fire in the Mont Blanc Tunnel, a major thoroughfare
between France and Italy, causing 39 deaths and over $1 billion in losses to
the region.
The Oakland Hills, California, fire, in which a lit
cigarette was a cause, left 10,000 homeless, destroyed nearly 4,000 dwellings
and cost more than $1.5 billion.
And in Texas City, Texas, the FBI blamed a cigarette for
probably igniting an ammonium nitrate explosion in 1947, causing the worst
industrial disaster death toll in U.S. history. The explosion caused nearly 600
deaths, 380 hospitalizations longer than two months, 4,100 casualties, and
damage to more than 90% of the city's buildings at a cost of more than $4 billion.
Scientific View
Although
cigarettes seem like nothing more than tobacco wrapped in paper, they are in
fact carefully engineered to look, taste, smell, and burn a certain way – and essentially
to go on burning when not being puffed. This feature spares smokers the trouble
of lighting up again, and pays off to vendors in higher sales from cigarettes
burning out in ashtrays. But it also means that a cigarette rolling off the lip
of an ashtray onto a mattress, or into the crack of a sofa, can smolder undetected
for 30 to 40 minutes before bursting into flames.
Smoldering Combustion
Smoldering is a
form of flameless combustion which can occur in cellulosic and similar materials
capable of charring. Smoldering can occur at very low oxygen concentrations,
and proceeds at a very slow rate.
And a most common
example of smoldering combustion is the burning of a cigarette. Heat from the
glowing combustion zone, which is normally at a temperature of 600°C or more,
chars adjacent tobacco, releasing
distillation and pyrolysis. As the combustion zone progresses down the
cigarette, compounds are released from the tobacco in any particular region, in
a sequence which depends upon the volatility and ease of production of each
compound. The tobacco immediately adjacent to the glowing front becomes almost pure
carbon. If air is drawn through the cigarette, the temperatures of the combustion
zone rises and the rate of progression of the smolder along the cigarette
increases.
The presence of
an air flow can substantially increase the smolder rate, perhaps by up to ten times. As the air flow is increased, flaming may
result. Fires with smoldering origins require very special conditions for their development. Suitable
materials, finely divided cellulosic substances, can smolder provided that a
suitable sustained heat input combined with insulation is available.
Typical materials
capable of allowing smoldering to develop include:
- Traditional furniture.
- Piled Sawdust.
- Baled cotton.
- Latex foam.
- Corrugated cardboard.
- Baled hay.
- Cellulosic fabrics (cotton or rayon).
So, learning
these potential dangerous consequences, you may wonder, how come most of the
smokers, their families, and their neighborhoods still survived. The point is
that developing fire from the cigarette indeed requires bad luck in most cases,
as it should be accompanied by special conditions.
Smoldering from a
cigarette end requires a pile of materials which are not only susceptible as
the above mentioned materials are, but which must also be arranged so that the
cigarette or, at the very least, in firm contact. Cigarettes may still cause of
fire even when the conditions are theoretically are not critical. In most
cases, a cigarette landing on a typical carpet would merely produce a small
burn which would not develop beyond the
immediate locality of the glowing tip. Similarly, a cigarette landing on a sheet
of paper would be very unlikely to produce anything more than a slight localized
charring. Even in waste bins where there may be a considerable amount of torn and
crumpled writing paper it is difficult to produce anything more than a minor smoldering
fire which may last for only a few minutes.
That is all true,
but do you want to perform scientific experiments, endangering yourself and
your family? Statistical data shows that in spite the fact that it is not easy
to start a fire caused by a cigarette, there are so many people who are
managing to achieve the disastrous results.
Smoker’s Safety
If you smoke or
live with someone who smokes, at least learn the facts. A lit cigarette left
alone in a room, accidentally dropped onto a chair or bed, or hot cigarette
ashes or matches tossed away before they are completely out - all can cause a
large fire.
Putting out a
cigarette the right way only takes seconds. It is up to you, and you only, to
make sure your cigarette is put out, all the way, every time. Better be
paranoid with double-verification that you completely killed it before moving
out.
Remember that you
put in danger not only your own life, but other people as well. One-in-four
people killed in home fires is not the smoker whose cigarette caused the fire.
- More than one third was children of
the smokers.
- Twenty-five percent were neighbors or friends of the smokers.
Smoking &
Home Fire Action Steps
- If you smoke, smoke outside. Most
home fires caused by smoking materials start inside the home. It's better
to smoke outside. If you smoke outside, put your cigarettes out in a can
filled with sand.
- Wherever you smoke, use deep, sturdy
ashtrays. Use ashtrays with a wide, stable base that are hard to tip over.
If it wobbles, it won't work.
- Make sure cigarettes and ashes are out.
The cigarette really needs to be completely stubbed out in an ashtray.
Soak cigarette butts and ashes in water before throwing them away. Never
toss hot cigarette butts or ashes in the trash can.
- Check for butts. Chairs and sofas catch
on fire fast and burn fast. Don't put ashtrays on them. If people have
been smoking in the home, check for cigarettes under cushions.
- Never smoke in a home where oxygen is
used. Never smoke while using oxygen or are anywhere near an oxygen
source, even if it is turned off. Oxygen can be explosive and makes fire
burn hotter and faster.
- If you smoke, fire-safe cigarettes are
better. Fire-safe cigarettes are less likely to cause fires. These
cigarettes have banded paper that can slow the burn of a cigarette that
isn't being used.
- Be Alert. To prevent a deadly fire,
you have to be alert. If you are sleepy, have been drinking, or have taken
medicine that makes you drowsy, put your cigarette out first. Smoking in
bed is just plain wrong.
- General Fire Safety Facts.
- Place properly installed and maintained
smoke alarms on every level of your home and inside and outside of
sleeping areas.
- Get smoke alarms that can sound fast for
both a fire that has flames, and a smoky fire that has fumes without
flames. They are called "Dual Sensor Smoke Alarms."
- Check smoke alarm batteries at least once
every year. You can use a familiar date such as when you change your
clocks or your birthday as a reminder.
- Create an escape plan. Plan two ways to
escape from every room. Practice the escape plan with everyone in the
home.
- If at all possible, install residential fire sprinklers in your home.
And, may be it is just better to quit smoking for good!
Sources and Additional Information:
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