Copyright 2006 The Oregonian
All Rights Reserved
By RICK BELLA
The Oregonian (Portland, Oregon)
Tim Birr has made a solemn New Year’s resolution. But it won’t put him on a crash diet or have him cutting up his credit cards.
Birr, a retired firefighter, is on a mission to make Oregonians remember people such as Pamela Lynn Hernandez, who was killed nearly a year ago when an unattended cigarette started a fire in her West Linn apartment. Firefighters battled flames for 15 minutes before they could get into the Country Garden Apartments. They found Hernandez, a 43-year-old painter and landscaper, in her living room, lying dead.
Unfortunately, this was not an isolated case. According to the state fire marshal’s office, six of Oregon’s 41 fire deaths in 2004 were caused by cigarettes. Nationally, cigarette-caused fires kill an average of 900 people a year and cause an estimated $4.6 billion in property damage.
“The cause for fires like these is always listed as ‘smoker’s carelessness,’ ” said Birr, former spokesman for Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue. “But the truth is many fires like this could be prevented if we required fire-safe cigarettes.”
“Fire-safe” or self-extinguishing cigarettes do not continue to burn on their own if left unattended. Unless the smoker takes regular puffs, these cigarettes go out. Manufacturers can make self-extinguishing cigarettes by using special ultra-thin paper with tiny “speed bumps,” rings of thicker paper that inhibit burning unless a smoker draws in air.
Cigarettes typically start fires when they land on bedding or furniture. The cigarettes burn longer than the materials can resist ignition. The same holds true when cigarettes are tossed out of cars into the sun-dried woods of late summer.
Three states — California, New York and Vermont — and Canada already require self-extinguishing cigarettes. Just after Christmas, a similar bill was introduced in the Washington Legislature.
“If you buy cigarettes in New York, you’re buying fire-safe cigarettes,” Birr said. “Some New Yorkers have complained that their cigarettes sometimes go out. But you know, they can relight them.”
Oregon could have been on the list of states already.
Birr began lobbying the Oregon Legislature last year, with the help of former state Rep. Tom Whelan, a retired Salem fire captain, and Chuck Tauman, a Portland attorney who has worked on anti-tobacco litigation. A self-extinguishing cigarette bill passed the Democratic-controlled Senate 21-8, but leaders in the Republican-controlled House blocked it from getting a hearing, and the bill died.
Tobacco lobbyists argued against the bill, saying they were worried that cigarette manufacturers would face a state-by-state patchwork of regulations. They called for a national standard, with uniform specifications for cigarette production.
However, the fire-safe standards are identical in the laws of California, New York, Vermont and Canada. In fact, the standards were derived from a study the tobacco industry participated in.
Early last month, Birr attended an international conference in Boston held by the Harvard School of Public Health to discuss the benefits of self-extinguishing cigarettes.
“Basically, they took all the arguments against fire-safe cigarettes, chewed them up and spit them out,” said Birr of Tigard. “We realized we have the means to save lives here. We know what the problem is, and we know how to fix it. But a lot of people need to be encouraged to take on Big Business.”
Birr, Whelan and Tauman already are planning strategies for the 2007 Oregon Legislature. And if you get to Salem and listen carefully, you’ll recognize them easily.
They’ll be the ones talking about Pamela Lynn Hernandez.