National Burn Awareness Week: Safety tips to prevent burn injuries in your household

Each year, nearly 500,000 people in the United States and Canada are treated for burn injuries caused by normal household activities including cooking, bathing and eating. Sadly, most of these traumatic burn injuries occur to young children.

This week, the Bakersfield-based personal injury law firm Chain | Cohn | Clark — with the help of U.S. Fire Administration and the American Burn Foundation — would like to raise awareness of common burn injury causes, and provide tips in hopes of preventing them altogether.

National Burn Awareness Week, observed from Feb. 5 to 11 this year, is designed to teach kids how to be responsible for their personal safety and to increase family awareness of potentially harmful situations in homes.

Most of these injuries occur due to lack of adult supervision and a failure to follow safe practices. Here are a few other facts about burn injuries in the home:

• Hot water scalds are the leading cause of burns to young children, and almost one-third of all burn injuries occur in children under the age of 15.
• Men are more likely to be burned than women
• Most of the injuries occur in the home; second is work.

So what can we all do to prevent burn injuries? Here are a few tips:

• Place objects so that they cannot be pulled down or knocked over.
• Turn pot handles away from the stove’s edge.
• Use dry oven mitts or potholders.
• Carefully remove carefully that has been cooked in the microwave. Slowly open containers, and open them away from the face.
• Wear short, close-fitting or tightly rolled sleeves when cooking.
• Never hold a child while you are cooking, drinking a hot liquid, or carrying hot items.

Sadly, accidents happen even when taking precautions. Here’s what you should do in the case of a burn injury:

• Treat a burn right away by putting it under cool, running water. Cool the burn for 15 to 20 minutes.
• Cover a burn with a clean, dry cloth. Do not apply creams, ointments, sprays or other home remedies.
• Seek immediate emergency medical care for more serious burns to prevent infection and other complications.

For years, Chain | Cohn | Clark has been devoted to providing proper care for burn victims — in and out of the courtroom. In fact, when San Joaquin Community Hospital established a burn center in 2009 to help Bakersfield and Kern County residents in need of specialized burn care, the law firm’s partners donated $200,000 toward the center and it was named the Chain | Cohn | Clark Burn Center. Additionally, Chain | Cohn | Clark attorney Matt Clark sits on the board of directors for Adventist Health Bakersfield, and annually helps with the “5 Alarm Barbecue” fundraiser aimed to help burn survivors in Kern County during their recovery. And you may remember this touching story of boy who was burned by fallen power lines in Ridgecrest, and whose family came to Chain | Cohn | Clark for help.

In other burn injury cases, lawyer David K. Cohn helped resolve a lawsuit for $10 million after a man was burned over 80 percent of his body in an oilfield accident. And the law firm is currently involved in several cases of exploding e-cigarettes that caused burn injuries.

If you or someone you know has suffered burn injuries at the fault of someone else, please contact the burn injury attorneys at Chain | Cohn | Clark at 661-323-4000, or visit the website.