A FORENSIC scientist said yesterday that all electric blankets should be “serviced every three years and dumped after 10 years”.
Ken Arnold spoke during an inquest at the Coroner’s Court in Derry into the death of an 18- month-old baby girl who died from burns after her parents’ 15-year- old electric blanket caught fire.
The blanket, which was faulty and malfunctioned, was on Sarah Jane Mullan’s parents’ bed when it caught fire on June 16th, 2009.
Sarah Jane was asleep in a cot in her parents’ bedroom at their Killyblight Road home near Dungiven, Co Derry, when the fire started. She suffered extensive burns to her face and head and died the following day in hospital.
Her parents, Stephen and Marie Mullan, told Northern Ireland’s senior coroner John L Leckey, that they were alerted to the fire when two smoke alarms in their farmhouse home activated.
Both tried to rescue the youngest of their four children but said they were beaten back by a combination of flames, intense heat and thick smoke.
Ms Mullan put a blanket over her head before she entered her bedroom but she was unable to withstand the intense heat. She said she usually switched on the electric blanket for between 10 and 20 minutes before turning it off when she and her husband went to bed.
Ms Mullan said she had only put her baby to bed five minutes before the smoke alarms went off.
Sarah Jane’s uncle, Trevor Mullan, a neighbour, told the inquest that he placed a ladder under the first-floor bedroom window. He smashed the window and trained a farmyard hose on to the fire.
Mr Mullan said he was unable to get into the bedroom because of the heat and flames but he did manage to reach in and grab Sarah Jane by her leg and pull her from her cot.
The coroner was told that Sarah Jane was alive at that stage. Members of the emergency services applied first aid, including medical oxygen, to her but she died later from her burns in hospital.
Mr Leckey, as well as two senior fire officers, said it was the first time they had been involved in an inquest in which a faulty electric blanket had caused a fatal fire.
Mr Arnold said the regular usage and the folding of an electric blanket could cause the wiring system to become brittle.
“An electric blanket should be serviced every three years but I don’t think many people do that,” Mr Arnold added. “It is also recommended that an electric blanket should be dumped after 10 years, that is according to the literature I have read. This was a fire of great intensity and rapidity.”
Describing the death of Sarah Jane as “a terrible tragedy”, the coroner said the efforts to attempt to save the baby were valiant and he said that in no way should her parents “feel any responsibility for the tragic death of their baby daughter”.