Dealing With Preschoolers and Threat of Fire : Safety: Children under 4 years old are too young to understand the dangers of playing with lighters or matches, expert says.

At 3 years old, David Rico has already set a serious fire.

With the push of a button, the boy rendered his family homeless Thursday afternoon when he ignited a mattress with a lighter he was playing with. The blaze gutted two bedrooms and caused heavy smoke damage to the rest of the apartment. The price tag: $75,000.

No one was hurt, but his mother is very concerned now about David’s curiosity with fire.

“He has no idea what he did,” 27-year-old Christina Rico said.

The boy appeared penitent as a fire investigator talked to his mother Thursday, but was later laughing and running around outside the apartment as firefighters cleaned up the mess.

David, like many preschool children, is too young to understand the danger of fire, but is old enough to start one, said John Hall, a statistician with the National Fire Protection Agency.

Fires started by children are enough of a problem that the San Diego Fire Department has created a program to teach those youngsters the dangers in their fascination with flame.

The numbers are up sharply this year. In 1990, 75 children from ages 4 to 14 attended the department’s Juvenile Firesetter Program. All the children had set at least one fire, said Dan Goebel, who runs the program. So far this year, 111 children have gone through the program.

About 30% of the children who come through his office have a high level of interest in fire that is linked to some emotional disturbance, Goebel said. Most are just curious, and “they just want to light a match and see what it can do; curiosity is a very natural thing.”

The emotionally disturbed children are referred to a treatment program. The 14-year-old firesetter program is mainly designed to educate and satisfy curiosity.

“The idea is to prevent the children from hurting themselves,” said Goebel, who uses pictures and videos to help explain to juveniles that fire “is a tool, not a toy.”

Goebel’s program is one of 16 juvenile fire education programs in the county, and almost all target children older than 4 because preschoolers are too young to counsel, Goebel said.

“There have been children younger than 2 who have been able to start lighters,” Hall said. “The physical coordination is there, so you’d better not count on that saving your kid. The younger the child is, the more likely the solution will be to emphasize the role of the care giver.”

Parents should take pains to keep matches and lighters from the reach of curious tots because it’s difficult to teach them about the dangers of fire if they are younger than 5, Hall said. “They can barely grasp the concept of a match or a lighter, much less figure out what not to do with it,” Hall said.

David Rico’s mother admitted that the lighter he was playing with was easily ignited. “All you do is press a button,” she said. “It’s not very child-proof.”

Hall also recommended that parents keep a close watch on children.

“Most of the time the fire starts in places where you would expect them to be if they were doing innocent things--bedrooms and living rooms and so forth,” Hall said.

About 300 children under 5 years old die each year nationwide from fires set by juveniles, Hall said. Sometimes preschoolers themselves are the firebugs, or they may be innocent bystanders playing with another child, Hall said.

One of the biggest dangers of children who play with fire is that they won’t tell someone if they started a blaze, Goebel said.

He still winces when he recalls the time he went to a fire in Golden Hill that was started by a 6-year-old girl who had been playing with matches.

“She ignited a curtain and became frightened, so she went and hid in a corner,” Goebel said. “We found her body later. Her younger sister, who was 3, was playing with her, and she became frightened too, so she went and hid under the bed. When we found her, she was welded to the springs of the mattress.”

David had apparently done a similar thing, according to his mother.

He had set the mattress on fire, then closed the door without telling anyone, Rico said.

She was watching television in the living room with David when her 5-year-old daughter came into the room shouting about smoke. “When I opened the door, the room was in flames,” she said.

David, she said, had never been known to play with fire before. Rico felt that her son was probably only experimenting.

But 90% of preschoolers who set fires are acting out a problem rather than just experimenting, said Steven Sherber, a psychotherapist who is involved in the Fire Setting and Impulse Disorder Treatment program at Vista Hill Hospital.

“It’s not unusual to see a 3-year-old firesetter,” said Sherber, who has worked with more than 600 children. “It usually is an indication of difficulty in the family.”

Children younger than 5 might be unable to understand fear or anxiety, “but they act it out,” Sherber said.

Last year, he treated a 4-year-old girl who had set a fire around her brother’s crib. The girl was competing with the new baby for her parents’ attention, Sherber said.

However, only about 5% of families with preschoolers who set a fire ever seek help, he said. “People look the other way at this age. . . . Sometimes the child may just be experimenting,” he said, “but more often than not, it’s an indication that something’s wrong.”

Children younger than 5 may receive some education in preschool, “but not everyone goes to preschool,” Goebel pointed out. “You can’t reach everyone. Some children may fall through the cracks. Even some parents don’t know about fire safety before they become parents.”