Speaking to Chris Hollins on the BBC’s Watchdog last week she described the horror that unfolded when her eight-year-old daughter’s Halloween costume caught fire.
“I was talking to somebody and then I just heard her scream,” she said. “She just screamed: ‘Mummy’ and I turned round and that was that, she was just on fire.
“Everyone was screaming. She was screaming, all the kids there were screaming. It feels like she was on fire for hours, but the surgeon said that it definitely wasn’t the case and it was probably just seconds.
“It was like those horrific birthday candles that you blow out and then they come back… it was really fast, it was fast, it wasn’t fire like I’d seen.
“We couldn’t put her out. Her tights had melted into her skin.”
Classified as toys rather than clothes fancy-dress costumes are subject to less rigorous health and safety standards.
Jorge Leon-Vallapalos, the plastic surgeon at London’s Chelsea and Westminster hospital who treated Matilda Winkleman, says the incident was hardly rare. Calling it “a mini epidemic […] in certain periods of the year” he called for a change in the law.
Tony Crook, group manager at Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service, agreed: “Children’s fancy dress costumes are not always fire-proofed or fire retardant and they can easily become engulfed in fire if they are exposed to a naked flame.”
Winkleman said the incident was “life changing, but not life defining […] I would like parents to, just on Halloween, just to think about what they’re going to put their kids in because I didn’t, and it cost us.”
Download the Fire Safety in 2023 eBook, keeping you up to date with the biggest news and prosecution stories from around the industry. Chapters include important updates such as the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 and an overview of the new British Standard for the digital management of fire safety information.
Plus, we explore the growing risks of lithium-ion battery fires and hear from experts in disability evacuation and social housing.
A quite amazing twist of language to cleverly define a ‘toy’ which children wear as not being clothing! I have motorcycle clothing which I go out and ‘play’ in on my bike, but that has to meet many standards.
All the stores were quite happy to flog this stuff knowing its potential dangers for many years, until a high profile case gets in the news. Suddenly, they are ‘investigating’ any improvements which could be me made.
They are the pipers and could have easily specified a better product from any supplier, but that would COST MORE!!
Jorge Leon – Vallapalos is right!!! this type off incident is not rare and lots of children suffer the same if not worse fate and its about time that “COSTUMES” complied with current children’s clothing specifications. I would like to see some stats on just how many children have been affected over the past decade.