Mother calls for Chinese lantern ban after son, three, is burned by molten wax on bonfire night

Mother calls for Chinese lantern ban after son, three, is burned by molten wax on bonfire night

www.dailymail.co.uk

A three-year-old boy has been left with horrific burns after molten wax from a floating Chinese lantern fell from the sky and scalded him.
Cael Jones was celebrating bonfire night at a family fireworks party in Penycae, near Wrexham in North Wales, when the accident happened.
His mother, Emma Foulkes, called it 'the worst night of my life', and has called for the lanterns to be banned before anyone else is hurt.


Read more: www.dailymail.co.uk...

(visit the link for the full news article)

Quite a tragic story but an absolute rarity in my opinion, certainly not one which should result in an outright ban of Chinese lanterns. As someone who has poured hot wax on himself a number of times (not in a weird way) I do not believe this was the cause of the burns, it is much more likely that the oil is to blame.

I think perhaps as per usual more supervision, and caution is required when releasing the lanterns. As I have never purchased one, I cannot comment on the quality of intructions that come with the lanterns, perhaps there is a warning contained with the packaging?

Obviously kids should be able to experience things without being wrapped in cotton wool, and it is my belief that this is somewhat of a very rare occurrence, and therefore it is dramatic to call for an outright ban. Although I completely understand that when you are dealing with the mother of an iinjured child it is a very delicate situation.

If a ban were to occur we could take one positive from it though, fewer false UFO sightings.

www.dailymail.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

Tragedies happen. I wish people would deal with their pain in a private way or with friends rather than through destructive activism like this woman is doing.

But I have no kids so what do I know?

reply to post by Big Raging Loner


I really hate the culture we are developing of banning everything that isn't completely idiot proof and bringing everything down to the lowest common denominator.

Hey you just set fire to a big lump of wax and sent it floating into the air, how about making sure your child isn't standing underneath it and being a responsible parent instead of expecting the government to do it for you.

Cael and 20 other children each released a lantern and made a wish but as one of the light displays floated up into the night sky, its candle burner fell on to the little boy's face. Read more: www.dailymail.co.uk...

These are dangerous objects and are supposed to be used by responsible adults,if anything the mother should be charged with neglect.

Does she also let her 3 year old light fireworks?

If they would be banned, then the poor UFO-debunkers would loose one of their most important cards they hold on to.

reply to post by Nightchild


No, That still leaves them Swamp gas, Venus and Weather balloons

I feel sorry for the kid though.

I'm not buying it.

I think the wax would be cool by the time it fell that far. I don't have scientific proof of that but when I was a kid I launched model rockets. A couple of times I had some failures and those rockets hit the ground straight away (like a fin falls off). The rocket engines would be scalding for a half hour. If you touched them you would get burnt. But the rockets that went up normally a couple of hundred feet would be cool to the touch by the time they hit the ground (1 to 2 minutes later).

Other anecdotal evidence includes dripping hot wax on another person in bedroom games. No scalding burns there!

This thread has me thinking of taking a candle to my upstairs window and dripping some hot wax down two floors onto my deck. If the wax drops hit the deck as blobs I know they would be cool from a hundred feet up.

Pretty nasty,and happened quite near where I reside.
Poor kid,the photo looked horrid.
But the sort of chinese lanterns I have seen used a kind of slow flammable paper,like you get in single use BBQs,not molten wax,and could not drip onto people-maybe this was a home made jobbie?

But that aside,they should be banned for generating so many fake UFO reports IMO.

She should go back to her country and eat some lead paint or stand in front of a scalding hot tank in Tienimen Square.

How quickly people become "Americanized", that is to believe that activism can make death and injury illegal.

Why don't they just do that? Just make injury illegal. If you don't sooner or later you have to ban damn near everything to keep people safe.

reply to post by SLAYER69


Hi

Personally think they should all be banned as well! :-)

Peace!

reply to post by JonInMichigan


I don't think it's wax that they use (I know thats what the article says, but it is the Daily Mail) the ones I have in the cupboard use something that looks like a fire lighter, and some others I have seen have some kind of flammable gel.
Not sure what it's made of though

Just one more post on this...

How does she know it wasn't an actual extraterestrial UFO who sent a radiation beam down to burn him? Could happen!

Originally posted by The Wave
reply to post by SLAYER69

 

Hi

Personally think they should all be banned as well! :-)

Peace!

You mean banning Swamp gas, Venus and Weather balloons too?

Originally posted by davespanners
reply to post by JonInMichigan

 

I don't think it's wax that they use (I know thats what the article says, but it is the Daily Mail) the ones I have in the cupboard use something that looks like a fire lighter, and some others I have seen have some kind of flammable gel.
Not sure what it's made of though

Some crazy flamable gel or melting plastic would be plausable. Buring wax just doesn't stay hot for long enough to burn, especially falling from a height. Common sense dictates that.

reply to post by Nightchild


Hi

Exactly! The swamp gas might explode, Venus (if she's in the wrong mood can be deadly) and as for weather balloons - who knows where they might land - Roswell, Cardiff, Sydney...?

Peace!

There's no reason to ban...because of a rare accident. I realize the mom is emotionally stirred by this incident, but it's not reasonable. They should only put additional safety warnings on events involving Chinese lanterns.

Ban people from letting aerial containers holding scorching oil and scolding wax into the air, to drift unguided over populated areas?

Rubbish!

Originally posted by RestingInPieces
Ban people from letting aerial containers holding scorching oil and scolding wax into the air, to drift unguided over populated areas?

Rubbish!

I get your point on this one, but you can use hyperbole to make anything sound like it should be banned.

Kettles. Aggh it's an electrified container full of scalding hot water that has a lead attached that can be pulled by children

Gas Cookers: A device that pipes highly explosive and toxic gasses into your home that has no automatic safety cut off and you deliberately set fire to

Candles: A burning hot stick of molten wax that is made into the most unstable shape possible and causes millions of house fires a year

The world is not a creche

Quite tragic, but also their own fault.

It was THEIR OWN chinese lantern, that THEY had lit and sent into the sky. Instead of standing well back, as you'd imagine you would when dealing with them, they decided to all stand gawping up at them directly above them.

The lantern in question got to the height of the roof and the oil, wax burner thing fell, obviously falling onto the young child directly below it. If he'd have been stood back at a safe distance it wouldn't have happened. Seems common sense to me.

Personally I don't see the point in them anyway. Yeah they were a nice novelty at first, but now they're kind of boring, plus they don't biodegrade and end up just burning out and dropping somewhere.

Because one dumb mother ALL chinese lanterns should be banned?? NOW THATS BAD PARENTING..