Cigarettes can be hazardous to your health in other ways.
Jump to full article: Kansas City (MO) Star, 2008-08-22
Author: JOE LAMBEThe Kansas City Star
Intro: Until two fatalities this year, no one had died in an Overland Park fire for six years.
An 84-year-old woman in February and a 59-year-old women in March died the same way as a man and woman in a 2002 fire: cigarettes smoldered after the victims fell asleep and caused fires and toxic smoke.
Nationwide, experts report, smoking causes the largest number of deaths in home fires.
After the two women died this year — the first on the 10900 block of Gillette Street and the other on the 9000 block of West 78th Circle — Overland Park firefighters went door-to-door and left leaflets warning about the dangers, they said, but the message apparently missed the mark.
Last month, a middle-aged woman who lived within blocks of the second fatality narrowly escaped after she woke up with her bed on fire from a cigarette, said Jason Rhodes, a spokesman for the fire department.
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