The following article is from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It is all about burn prevention.

We all want to keep our children safe and secure and help them live to their full potential. Knowing how to prevent leading causes of child injury, like burns, is a step toward this goal.

Every day, over 300 children ages 0 to 19 are treated in emergency rooms for burn-related injuries and two children die as a result of being burned.

Younger children are more likely to sustain injuries from scald burns that are caused by hot liquids or steam, while older children are more likely to sustain injuries from flame burns that are caused by direct contact with fire.

Thankfully, there are ways you can help protect the children you love from burns.

Key Burn Prevention Tips

To prevent burns from fires and scalding:

• Be “alarmed”.
  Install and maintain smoke alarms in your home—on every floor and near all rooms family members sleep in. Test your smoke alarms once a month to make sure they are working properly. Use long life batteries when possible.
• Have an escape plan.
  Create and practice a family fire escape plan, and involve kids in the planning. Make sure everyone knows at least two ways out of every room and identify a central meeting place outside.
• Cook with care.
  Use safe cooking practices, such as never leaving food unattended on the stove. Also, supervise or restrict children’s use of stoves, ovens, and especially microwaves.
• Check water heater temperature.
  Set your water heater’s thermostat to 120 degrees Fahrenheit or lower. Infants and small children may not be able to get away from water that may be too hot, and maintaining a constant thermostat setting can help control the water temperature throughout your home, which  will prevent it from getting too high. Test the water at the tap if possible.

While “Can Do”Street is an imaginary place, the creative place where “Can Do” Street is housed is in New York City. Since Sandy hit Monday, the 29th of October, the offices and homes of those make “Can Do” Street possible have been without electrical power and still are. We have no heat and no hot water. For a day or so, without a car, without buses running, many of us had no food with the closest access to fresh food  over a mile away

There is still nothing open from the tip of Manhattan to above 34th Street, river to river. Most people in Manhattan don’t keep a car. Parking is too expensive. Our mass transit system makes getting around easier than driving. But, when the lights go out, the heat goes off,  the only water is cold, and then the transit system is shut down, daily living becomes a challenge.

One of the staff has a car, so we can  travel beyond the blackout area in lower Manhattan to upper Manhattan where there is electricity and restaurants and stores open. Now gas is an issue. The lines for gas were hours long yesterday. Today, there is no gas to be had. We are getting seriously low on gas.

Buses returned to service on a limited schedule, but the initial traffic jams made commuting a several hour process. Trains are slowly returning to service but still do not operate below 34th Street. There is no train service through the tunnels that link Manhattan to Brooklyn, a route that carries  100,000’s of people to and from their homes to work each day.

Two major hospitals in lower Manhattan had to be evacuated, moving over a thousand patients to safety.

I have only praise for the police and first responders who continue to keep us safe, especially when we must navigate neighborhoods in total darkness as we make our way home from work.

I am writing this post on a laptop with a T-Mobile Wi-fi connection in a library in one of  the outer boroughs of NYC. The going is slow, but it is better than nothing.

Hopefully,  we can start working in our office soon. Until then…thanks for your patience!

best,

Jean