Electric blanket led to baby's fire death
A FAULT in a 15-year-old electric blanket caused the fire which claimed the life of a Dungiven baby girl last summer, an inquest into her death has heard.
Eighteen-month-old Sarah Jane Mullan died in hospital following a fire at her home in Killyblight Road on June 16 last.
The inquest heard how Sarah Jane had been asleep in her cot in her parents' bedroom when the fire, started by the electric blanket, quickly took hold.
The toddler suffered extensive burns to her head and body in the fire - covering some 90 per cent of her body.
The surviving members of her family - her parents Stephen and Marie and her three siblings, aged five, 10 and 12 - all suffered severe smoke inhalation in the blaze which broke out shortly after 11pm.
Sarah Jane's distraught parents told the inquest that they had switched on the blanket just a short time before the fire broke out. They had tried, in vain, to save their daughter but were forced back by the intense heat, flames and fumes.
It was Sarah Jane's uncle, Trevor Mullan, who climbed a ladder outside the house and reached in the bedroom window to pull the badly-injured toddler out of the fire.
However, Fire Officer Peter McDermott, who attended the scene, said it was very quickly clear that Sarah Jane's injuries were severe. She
was treated by officers at the scene before being taken to Altnagelvin Hospital where she died a short time later.
Giving evidence, forensic scientist Ken Arnold said that investigations had shown that the cause of the fire had been a fault in the electric blanket on Mr and Mrs Mullan's bed.
He said that the repeated folding and unfolding of a blanket in and out of storage could have been enough to damage the wiring system.
He recommended that anyone possessing an electric blanket have it serviced every three years and dispose of it after 10 years.
Describing Sarah Jane's death as a tragedy, Coroner John Lecky told the Mullan family that they should not blame themselves and it appears that they did everything right.
"You had working smoke alarms fitted. You had only turned on the blanket for a short time, as you did every night before going to bed. You did all that you could have done," he said.
He added that it was the first time in his lengthy career as a coroner that he had presided over an inquest in which a fire had been started by an electric blanket.
Indeed, Assistant District Commander of the Fire Service John Lynch praised the family for having fully functional smoke alarms, saying that he would "have been fearful for the rest of the family had the smoke alarms not been working".
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Tuesday 14 February 2012
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