Oakland Firefighters Rescue Baby From Hot Car

Dec 27, 2023

One family is grateful after Oakland firefighters rescued their baby who was in a hot car.

According to fire officials, the family accidentally locked their keys inside their car along with their six-month old baby Sunday in East Oakland.

Luckily, the crew at Oakland Fire Station 20 was able to arrive quickly and rescue the baby.

"We heard the baby crying, so we got the tools, the lockout kit tools out of the truck," said Lt. Travis Nelson with the Oakland Fire Department.

Nelson's crew quickly got the baby out of the car and safely into its mother's arms.

"Then we started giving her some pointers on, how not to lock the child in the car, we just gotta be real mindful with this heat about who is in the car," Nelson said. "You don't want to play around with this heat like this with somebody locked in a car, especially a child."

Nelson said his team has already responded to several calls where people got dangerously dehydrated over the weekend. He is urging the community to be safe and to look before they lock their cars.

It was about 90 degrees outside the car at the time of the rescue on Sunday. While the temperature in Oakland wasn't as hot as some parts of the Bay Area that day, it was still plenty hot enough to be dangerous.

Jan Null, a Certified Consulting Meteorologist and and Adjunct Professor of Meteorology at San Jose State University, has spent years researching and educating the public on the impacts of heat inside locked cars.

Null explained, "after ten minutes in a car on a 90 degree day, the temperatures going to be 110 degrees [inside the car], after 20 minutes, its going to be 119 degrees, both of those would be fatal sorts of conditions for a child to be left in."

Null added that even when temperatures aren't above normal, leaving children alone in a car unattended is dangerous. He explained that in the first few minutes a car is turned off and locked, the temperature inside rises.

"There was a death at the El Cerrito BART station over ten years ago of a child [left in a car], and it was a 67 degree day, it does not have to be heat waves like we have now, that obviously exacerbates things when we have these sorts of temperatures, " Null said.

He added that the mom in the incident on Sunday in Oakland did the right thing by calling 9-1-1 for help. Null said if you see a kid or a pet locked in a car, you should do the same.

Alyssa Goard has the full story in the video above.

Earlier this afternoon, Truck 7 provided life saving support to a grateful family in East #Oakland, with a quick response to an approximately 6 month old baby locked in the hot car on 92 degree day. The baby is doing fine, great work T7! pic.twitter.com/QBrmlaP0O4