An 11-month-old girl who died after being left in a car during the midday heat for more than three hours in Homewood Wednesday was the second child to die in a hot car in Alabama in the past two weeks.
The girl's mother did not realize she was in the SUV when she went to work around 10 a.m. Wednesday, and was taken to Children's of Alabama hospital when her mother found her around 1:20 p.m. The temperature outside was around 90 degrees, and inside the SUV it was close to 120 degrees, police said.
Cyller Nelson, 4, was found dead in a car at a mobile home park in Mobile on July 9 not long after he was reported missing. The exact cause of Cyller's death hasn't been determined, but investigators said they believe it was heat-related.
On Memorial Day, a Boaz woman was arrested after leaving her grandchild in a car in the parking lot of a Walmart store.
An average of about 37 children die in hot cars a year, said Jan Null, a certified consulting meteorologist at San Francisco State University who studies the phenomenon. Null said the girl's death in Homewood was the 21st so far this year in the U.S.
Almost all of them happen during the summer months, and from May to September a child dies in a car almost twice a week, he said.
Null said most don't happen when it's abnormally hot outside; they happen on typical summer days.
"During the really hot spells, I don't see as many cases," he said. "And I think that's because people have more awareness of the heat."
Null said vehicles heat up fast, and the inside of a car can reach dangerous temperatures in a matter of minutes. On a 90-degree day, the interior temperature can approach 110 degrees in just ten minutes. After half an hour, it can be well above 120. But that's just the temperature of the air in shaded areas of the car.
"If you have accidentally forgotten your child in a vehicle," Null said, "if she's in one of the two back seats, there's a 50/50 chance she's going to be in direct sunlight."
Why were all of these children left in cars? Most of them died because their caretakers "forgot" about them, Null said. His analysis of media reports of heat-related deaths of children in cars from 1998 to 2012 showed more than half of the children were "forgotten" by caretakers. Nearly 30 percent of the victims were children playing in unattended vehicles, and less than 20 percent were children intentionally left in the vehicle.
Null said caretakers should always remember when a child is in the car and check to make sure the child isn't there. He also said anyone who sees a child left in a car should call 911 immediately. Also, if you're searching for a missing child, he said to check the most dangerous places first, not the most likely places.
"If a child is missing, look in the pool first and then look in the car," he said. "If they're hiding in a closet, you aren't going to be happy with them but they're going to be safe."