Parents in Hoppers Crossing are being put on notice after Ambulance Victoria data revealed the suburb has Melbourne’s second-highest rate of children being left in locked cars.
Between September 2012 and August this year, paramedics were called to more than 1100 cases in Victoria of children under 13 being left in cars.
Twenty-four of the 57 cases reported in Wyndham were in Hoppers Crossing. Frankston had the highest number of callouts (25).
Ambulance Victoria group manager Brett Drummond warned that leaving children in a car could be deadly.
“Babies and young children can’t regulate their body temperature like adults can, so being left in a hot car can quickly become life threatening,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be a scorching hot day for the car to quickly heat up.
‘‘Tests by Ambulance Victoria found that even on a 29-degree day, the inside of a car can reach 44 degrees within 10 minutes and hit 60 degrees within 20 minutes.”
Hoppers Crossing CFA duty officer Darren Miller said parents needed to learn that it was dangerous to leave a child in a car at any time of year.
“Leaving a child in a car is bad, but leaving them in a hot car is stupid and dangerous.”
Mr Miller said firefighters were often called on to free children from cars in shopping centre car parks.
Last month, a Werribee woman and her friends rescued an eight-month-old girl from a car at Werribee plaza.
Erin (not her real name) freed the girl, who was hot and dehydrated, by breaking a window in the car. She said the girl had been left in the car for at least 45 minutes while her mother was shopping.
