[sub]Sorry if this has been answered - “tot” is too small to search and “finder” floods me with Apple OS threads ;)[/sub]
Background for the uninitiated: Families used to put these shiny oval Tot Finder stickers on their kid’s windows, so that firemen would (I guess) go into that room first to save the children. Won’t somebody think of the children?!!
Anyway, I was wondering if this still happens? I used to see them all over growing up in the Midwest, in fact I’m pretty sure there was one in my window, but out here in San Francisco I don’t recall ever seeing one. Was this a regional thing?
A related question - did this ever work? That is, is there a known instance where a fireman rescued a child from a burning building thanks to these stickers?
And how about liability? What if a family forgot to remove that sticker and their kid went off to college, then the firemen targeted that room and someone else in the house died b/c they charged into the empty converted guest bedroom? Or, (I shudder to think), wouldn’t a pedophile up to no good simply go cruising for these stickers? How about a situation in which the firemen ignored the sticker and tragedy ensued?
I live in the Northern California area and I still see these stickers. But the ones are see the most are the “pet finder” ones, that alert the firemen of pets in the house
These were not a Midwest thing. My father was a firefighter when I was growing up, and they were on the windows of my bedroom and the windows of my siblings. I clearly remember that exact design from my childhood.
Some places still use that design. I note that this FD and my father’s are both in NJ.
Other places are replacing Tot Finder with a similar program where the sticker is on the child’s bedroom door, facing the hall. Makes sense, since that’s where the firefighters searching the house are going to be.
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I see that the New Bedford FD mentions the same issue Dooku did about not removing the stickers when the child leaves.
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It takes a bit of attentiveness, a safety razor and a ladder to stop wasting a firefighter’s time. That is, unless your Tot Finder stickers were the reversed ones, and you stuck them on from the inside. Then life is cake, you take the razor and remove it when it is no longer relevant. The issue of ’ oh yeah, well what do we do when Missy and Junior leave for college? ’ doesn’t apply. It’s called a TOT FINDER for a reason. You’re high school or college age? You can throw your chair out the window, thereby both venting smoke AND alerting firefighters that you are in there, and are big enough to throw that chair. The stickers are for searches of rooms where the child is not strong enough to make their presence known any other way.
I find them to be a perfectly excellent idea. Far from being some Snopesable Urban Myth, I have listened to local firefighters here in my small town who’ve mentioned hitting those windows first ( and, with special delicacy ). No idea if they found kids in there, but since the attempt is made to sweet your average house top to bottom anyway, using those stickers isn’t as much about ignoriing one room over an other as it is to focus primary entry points to those areas where - at night at least- children may be asleep or hiding from the fire in the hallway.
I use em. But then, I’ve also taken my family through a few fire drills, with a Safe Location to meet at in case we scatter out during a fire in the night time. I’m a bit paranoid…
Speaking of firefighters and pets, do FDs usually have written policies regarding the rescue of pets, or do they treat them the same as small children?
We don’t have anything written as to pet rescue. Having said that, we also don’t have anything written on saving of children, either. Whenever a rescue is attempted, there’s kind of a risk-benefit analysis that goes on before someone goes in. If mom and dad are in the front yard yelling “our son is in that bedroom, we just saw his head pop up in the window” versus “I think someone might be inside, I’m not sure,” there are going to be two different intensities (and therefore, risks) of searches. Either way, a search will be conducted, but you can bet your youy-know-what that a lot more resources are going to be put into the kid in the window rescue.
As for pets, think of it as somewhere in between the two above scenarios. For the most part, though, if the animal didn’t come out of the house when the occupants did, the animal didn’t make it. Dogs and cats are pretty good about getting out on their own, if there aren’t any closed doors on the way. Since few animals can open doors on their own, that closed door is a death sentence for the animal. Animals in cages do good if the cage is close to the floor (smoke rising and all that). Birds, I’ve never seen one survive a fire. I’ve seen them die from very small fires. Birds have intolerant lungs, and their cages are generally up high (in the smoke). I wouldn’t want to be a bird.
After that rambling, though, I can get you a new cat for $10. A new child, thats a little tougher. Our searches are kind of based on that logic. Remember, operating inside of a burning structure is one of the most difficult and dangerous jobs there is. Hell, I do my best to stay out of them (but boy do I have an affection for chopping holes in roofs above them). But in the end, its tougher to tell parents that they lost their child than it is to tell them they lost their dog.
I know my sister is paranoid that the animals won’t be saved in the event of a fire…she’s even told her boyfriend that if he’s there, and there’s a fire, his job is to grab the aquarium* which houses a single, 8 or 9 year old sharky-fish-thing! If you’re one of the firefighters at my house, watch out, because she’ll make your life miserable if you don’t do you best to get her pets to safety! I’m sure the dog would get out fine (he follows her everywhere, and I think one of my cats is smart enough to boot it, but the other cat? Who knows
I used to have a sticker like that on my bedroom window in the house I lived in when I was very little. I think the sticker was there when we moved in. It was also there when we left, but I think the new owners had a kid too that would use that room. It wasn’t the same sticker though - for some reason I’m thinking it was a War Amps thing? I don’t know, its been so long! Oh, and this was in Quebec, so it probably explains the different sticker!
I’m from PA and one of the windows in the back room of my house has a “Tot finder” sticker in it. It was there when I moved in. I suppose I should really get it out of there since I’m the only one living here and that room’s more or less a junkyard of random computer components like motherboards and cases.
I know that my local fire department (Houston) stopped using those stickers because people were too lazy to remove them (as discussed above). I asked when they visited our local library a couple of months ago.
Yes, it is very simple to remove the stickers, but that doesn’t account for people who don’t think of it or simply don’t care.
I just found something that I find a little upsetting. While the HFD website seems to say nothing about Tot Finder stickers, they do have Invalid Stickers. Not that I begrudge the invalid their protection, but why keep these stickers and discontinue the Tot Finder stickers?
But they can move house or die and do other things that would invalidate the sticker. I’m really not trying to sound insensitive; I think both stickers are good ideas as long as people are responsible about them.
I grew up in a family of firemen, and i know that at least here in Milwaukee if the fire is relatively stable, (i.e. they’re reasonable sure that the building isn’t about to collapse hard as it is to judge though) or they come across pets while searching the house, they will treat them as well as they would any human. My uncle once rescued an dog from a burning bulding and preformed CPR on it on the front lawn.
I used to be an engineer (DESIGN engineer, not the guy who runs the pump) for a manufacturer of firefighting apparatus (Grumman, if you’re interested). I once attended a large trade show in Baltimore. There was a booth there sponsored by whatever organization makes the Tot Finder stickers.
At the time, I had a daughter who was less than a year old, our first kid. The booth was full of poster-sized pictures of burned-up babies. Very graphic. I remember being somewhat pissed off at them for displaying these pictures, but I did buy a sticker. They had a good point, but I really wished they could have conveyed it in some other way. That was 1990 and I can still remember what the pictures looked like.
Incidentally, while reading this I realized that I left the sticker in the window of the house when we moved out. Whoops!
I’ve never heard of any litigation over the stickers, either from not following them or from taking their presence as gospel. To be perfectly honest, I don’t personally look for them. The family’s and neighbors’ screaming when you arrive is usally enough to start you off in the right direction. Also, regardless of the stickers being there, the room is getting searched. Even when we’ve been told everyone’s outside, we still search. You never know if little Jr. had a friend over for the night that mom and dad forgot about.
