Child safety

In the Republic of Belarus, facts of child deaths and injuries are recorded annually. In 2022, 112 children died from external causes in the country, 14 of them in fires. In 2023, 4 children died in fires, one of them in the Vitebsk region (April 15, 2023, Orsha, a boy born in 2017).

Children's pranks with fire often become the cause of fires. As practice shows, such fires often occur due to children's lack of skills in handling fire carefully, insufficient adult supervision of their behavior, and in some cases, parents' inability to organize their children's leisure time. Children aged three to seven often imitate the actions and deeds of adults in their games, mimicking their work. The desire for independence is especially evident when children are left alone. One cannot be sure that a child left alone at home will not decide to play with a box of matches or a lighter, will not want to set fire to paper, or will not start a campfire they saw in the forest.

On April 15, Orsha rescuers received a report of a fire in an apartment on Zadneprovskaya Street in the city of Orsha.

Upon arrival at the scene, the fire department observed nothing, but during the reconnaissance, the smell of smoke was present in the entrance hall.

According to eyewitnesses, the fire occurred in an apartment on the second floor of a five-story building. The owner's daughter, born in 1995, lived there with her sister, born in 1998, and her two sons, born in 2015 and 2017.

During the firefighting, employees of the Ministry of Emergency Situations found a woman born in 1995 and her son born in 2017 in the apartment in an unconscious state. After resuscitation measures by the ambulance team, their deaths were confirmed.

As a result of the fire, the walls and ceiling in the apartment were blackened, and property in the living room was damaged.

A check is being conducted regarding this incident, and the cause of the fire is being established.

On May 24, a woman and two young children died in a fire in the Pinsk district.

On May 24, at 1:39 AM, rescuers were informed about a fire in a residential building on Sportivnaya Street in the village of Chukhovo, Pinsk district.

MChS units were dispatched to the specified address. Upon arrival, it was determined that the residential wooden house was completely engulfed in flames.

During the reconnaissance, a woman born in 1989, who lived with the owner, and their young daughter born in 2020 and son born in 2022 were found deceased. The owner of the house was at work at the time of the fire.

The fire destroyed the roof, ceiling, and property, and damaged the walls. The cause of the incident is being established.

On May 25, at 21:53, the duty service of the MChS of the Volkovysk district received a report that a private residential house was on fire in the village of Konyukhi on Novaya Street. Fire crews and specialists from interacting services were immediately dispatched to the specified address.

Upon arrival at the scene, rescuers established that the roof of the wooden structure was completely engulfed in flames, and partial collapse had occurred.

It was found that a family with a child born in 2008 lives in the house. At the time of the fire, a teenager was in the dwelling, while the parents had gone to the store.

During firefighting and reconnaissance, MChS fighters discovered the owners' son deceased under the debris of building structures.

The fire destroyed the roof, ceiling, and property, and damaged the walls.

MChS employees provided psychological assistance to the relatives of the deceased child. The causes of the fire and the teenager's death are being established.

Most troubles with children happen in the apartment kitchen. And the reason for them lies in the carelessness and imprudence of adults. The personal example of safe behavior by parents is very important. Based on the nature of cases of burns sustained by children at home, it should be noted that in each of them, the injury could have been avoided with proper adult supervision. It is better to be overly cautious and keep a child in sight as much as possible than to harm their health by regretting one's own carelessness later:

As practice shows, children can suffer serious injuries due to carelessness when using flammable liquids. Flashes of gasoline, acetone, benzene, toluene, and some alcohol and ether vapors periodically cause fires, resulting in children being hospitalized:

On July 8, 2023, a child with burns on 40% of their body was admitted to the emergency room of the Orsha City Hospital from the village of Torchilovo. As it turned out from the circumstances of the check, the mother was with her children at the dacha plot. They lit a fire outside to cook food. While the mother was distracted for a while, the 9-year-old took a container of gasoline from the house and brought it to the fire, and his sister dipped a skewer from the grill into it. As a result, a flash occurred, and the boy's shorts caught fire. The mother extinguished the clothes herself and took the child to the hospital herself.

Poisonings are quite often registered among children, caused by carelessly stored medicinal substances and household chemicals. After all, bright labels and colorful pills attract the attention of curious toddlers. Since childhood injuries are mainly associated with children's lack of strong skills in proper behavior in various situations, preschool children are most susceptible to poisoning.

Approximately 100 patients with foreign bodies in their bodies are admitted to the Vitebsk Regional Children's Clinical Center annually. As a rule, these are either magnets or batteries.

On May 18, 2023, a child who swallowed 2 batteries, 16 magnets, and 1 screw was operated on in Vitebsk. The boy, who is not yet two years old, was urgently transported from the Dubrovno hospital to Vitebsk with intestinal bleeding. Here, the young patient also had an X-ray. The image on the screen shocked even experienced doctors. The decision was made immediately – to operate.

During outdoor games, many injuries occur due to poor choice of location – there is a high risk of injury from falling or hitting something. Lack of order in playgrounds, yards, and open areas poses a particular danger to children. Children should be told not to play where there are pits, stakes, wires, broken glass, nails, etc. Injuries happen when schoolchildren, during play, encounter metal objects sticking out of the ground. Under any circumstances, parents must supervise the places where their children play:

Construction sites, wastelands, and quarries are not places for children's games. Yet, these are often chosen by children for play. These places hide dangers not only for children but also for adults.

Children often choose vacant pits and abandoned quarries for their games. Kids like to play with sand and do not understand the danger that threatens them. Children build tunnels and dig trenches, create labyrinths and caves in the sand, slide down slopes, or climb up sandy hills. But sand is very dangerous, as ground collapse occurs instantly, and there is almost no chance to get out from under the rubble:

On June 16, 2014, in the Vitebsk region, a 10-year-old child died in a sand quarry. The boy was buried under a half-meter layer of sand while he and two friends were playing in the quarry. When the Ministry of Emergency Situations rescuers arrived at the scene, it became clear that the child was in a 15-meter deep sand pit. Twenty minutes after the report, rescuers pulled the boy out from under the rubble. The medical team spent another half hour performing resuscitation, but the child's life could not be saved.

Lack of order in the household and on city streets (uncovered roof access, unprotected stair railings, open basement and manhole covers, unbarricaded trenches during excavation, lack of fencing around buildings under repair, careless storage of materials at construction sites, etc.) poses a particular danger of falling and sustaining serious injury. For a child, falling into a sewer manhole can be fatal. In addition to the potential fatal blow to the head from a falling cover, a child can drown or suffocate in a main sewer pipe. Underground utilities are not ventilated at all, which leads to the accumulation of various heavy gases, such as propane, hydrogen sulfide, or carbon dioxide.

On April 8, 2023, in the Miory district of the Vitebsk region, a girl fell into a flooded basement and died. The tragedy occurred in the afternoon in the yard of a private house where children were playing. At some point, the 5-year-old girl disappeared from view. Her mother began to look for the child and, unfortunately, found her child's body in the flooded basement. The cellar was more than half-filled with water, and its depth was about 2 m.

When a baby arrives in the home, parents need to reconsider many aspects of their behavior. For example, open windows and balcony doors, with a momentary lapse in vigilance, can lead to tragic consequences. After all, a characteristic trait of a preschool-aged child is a desire to explore the surrounding reality and their high mobility. Such incidents are heard about particularly often in late spring, summer, and early autumn. This happens for various reasons: children were playing or leaning on mosquito nets, parents were not around – various things happen:

On July 14, 2023, a five-year-old boy fell out of a window in Vitebsk. It was established that the five-year-old boy woke up and found himself home alone. At that time, his father was at work, and his mother was not at home. The child opened the window to look for his parents, leaned on the mosquito net, and fell out of the second-story window.

Statistics on child fatalities in water are also disheartening. This year, 13 minors have drowned in the country. In our region, tragedies occurred in Miory, Polotsk, and Postavy districts.

Open water bodies are undoubtedly a source of danger, and therefore, caution when swimming and bathing is fully justified. The main causes of water accidents involving children are typically insufficient parental supervision, ignorance of safety rules, and inability to swim.

On June 21, 2023, at 19:26, rescuers received a report of a drowned child at Lake Zadevskoye in the city of Postavy. As it later turned out, children came to the lake in a group to swim, staying in shallow water. After some time, they decided to go ashore, and one of them got caught on something underwater. They asked the duty officers of the OSVOD for a mask, and one of the boys dived and saw the body of a drowned girl underwater. The body of the teenager, born in 2008, was recovered from the water by the rescue station workers. Before the arrival of medics, OSVOD rescuers carried out feasible resuscitation measures, and the arriving medics pronounced the girl dead.

On the evening of June 18, 2023, Polotsk rescuers received a call from a woman reporting a drowned teenager in a quarry near Kalinin Street in the city of Polotsk. According to the friend of the deceased, they went to the reservoir for recreation together, and they had low-alcohol beverages with them. A little later, the friend decided to swim and, having swum away from the shore, disappeared from view. His body was discovered by EMERCOM workers at a depth of about 2.5 meters.

Not only large bodies of water, but also decorative ponds, and even containers with water pose a danger, especially to small children. Sometimes, a small amount of water is enough for a tragic accident to occur with a child. Even a tank with rainwater standing in the yard can be dangerous.

We once again draw parents' attention to the fact that children should not just be "protected from fire": do not leave them unattended, do not allow them to play with matches and electrical appliances. It is necessary to teach children the rules for handling sources of fire and actions in case of fire.

Measures to prevent fires caused by children's mischief:

- do not leave matches and lighters in plain sight;

- do not allow children to buy matches or cigarettes;

- monitor children's leisure activities;

- do not leave children unattended;

- do not allow young children to watch stoves and heating appliances being heated, or to use gas appliances;

- learn your home address and phone number with your child so that they can contact the rescue service for help if necessary;

- write down the emergency service numbers on a piece of paper near the phone and explain to the child under what circumstances they can be used.