A Child’s Trial by Fire : Burns almost killed Madelyn Guerrero, 4. Now she’s determined to regain her mobility.

All that 4-year-old Madelyn Guerrero wanted to be is like Grace, her half-sister--even though she almost burned to death trying.

Grace Ruiz, 16, loves the color purple and so does Madelyn. Grace began listening to Whitney Houston’s latest album and Madelyn suddenly adored the pop diva, memorizing the words to several songs.

“That’s Gracie’s song,” she’ll burst out with a smile whenever a Houston tune comes on the radio.

Grace recently began wearing makeup and painting her fingernails to match her stylish wardrobe.

Madelyn’s zealous efforts to emulate her sister led her to climb onto a kitchen counter to get a bottle of nail polish remover stored high in a cupboard. The nail polish remover spilled onto a nearby stove pilot light, sending a stream of fire shooting at the little girl, enveloping her in flames.

“As a parent, you don’t think about things like nail polish remover being dangerous,” said Penny Guerrero, Madelyn’s mother and a nurse at a medical clinic in Tustin.

“But it comes in pretty colors and doesn’t smell as bad as it used to. So it’s attractive to kids. We just all need to be more aware.”

Guerrero has joined medical experts to warn other parents that household accidents such as her daughter’s are more common than people believe.

More than 25,000 people in the country received emergency medical treatment last year for accidents related to flammable liquids, according to the U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission. Last year, 150 children under age 5 died after playing with cigarette lighters, and 50 died from poisoning.

Household items such as water heaters and colorful cleaning liquids also are burn hazards, said Dr. Bruce Achauer, director of the UCI Medical Center Burn Center, where Madelyn has undergone outpatient treatment since the accident in February.

“Many of our child patients have burns that could be prevented with common sense,” he said. “Things need to be secured and out of reach.”

Some children, he said, fall prey to accidents because their curiosity gets the best of them.

That was the case with Madelyn, who used a chair to climb onto the kitchen counter to reach the nail polish remover. “When she wants something, nothing can stop her,” her mother said.

Madelyn had been home with a baby sitter when her clothes caught fire. Shortly after, neighbors who smelled smoke burst through the kitchen door to save the 4-year-old, who was barely breathing, Guerrero said. Madelyn had second- and third-degree burns on most of her body.

“I felt like it was my fault,” said Grace of the weeks Madelyn spent struggling to live while the teenager wondered if she would ever hear her little sister’s contagious giggle again.

“I used to paint her nails for her,” Grace said, her voice growing hoarse. “I didn’t know she knew where the remover was.

“I waited 12 years to have a sister. I didn’t want to lose my only one.”

After several weeks in the intensive-care unit, Madelyn is on the road to recovery.

“It was touch-and-go for a few weeks,” Achauer said. “We didn’t expect her to survive initially. She’s a real fighter.

“It’ll be about two years before she is back to normal. She’s got a long road ahead of her.”

Madelyn’s daily therapy at the burn center is excruciating.

Every morning, she must peel sticky bandages from her red, blistered body, then stretch twisted limbs that are in danger of staying that way unless she undergoes the daily regimen. Doctors perform skin graft surgery regularly.

While therapists cajoled her to try to uncurl an arm that remains cramped near her chest, Madelyn stubbornly resisted and wailed: “I want Gracie!”

Trying to comfort her, Louie Guerrero, her father, said: “The sooner we do this, the sooner you can go home and see her. Everything will be OK then, right?”

“OK,” she agreed in tears.

At home, the company of Grace and her three brothers is therapy that Madelyn likes better.

“She’s not the same as she used to be,” said Grace, as Madelyn, wrapped in a blanket, looked on at her three brothers and several cousins running around the Guerrero living room.

“But she’s coming around. Right, you little stinker?”

At that, Madelyn beamed a gap-toothed smile and stretched her arms out to her sister as far as she could.

“We get along because we’re the only two girls in a family full of boys,” Grace said. “We have to stick together.”

With a house usually full of romping youngsters, Penny Guerrero now worries constantly about inconspicuous household items that pose a danger.

As a reminder to her children and nephews of the accident, she has not yet washed from her linoleum floor the trail of burned footprints left by a frantic Madelyn that afternoon.

“I can’t even describe the feeling of seeing her with all of those tubes sticking out of her so she could breathe properly,” Guerrero said. “And I’m a nurse.

“The others need to remember that some things are very dangerous in the house,” she said. “If it weren’t for the neighbors. . . .”

That message appears to have sunk in with Guerrero’s children.

Witnessing his 6-year-old brother climbing on a kitchen counter recently, 2-year-old Daniel admonished: “Be careful, be careful! Fire.”

Grace said she hates to let her little sister out of her sight.

“She’s almost old enough to go to school,” she said. “That’s where she will have problems with other kids teasing her.

“If anyone says anything to hurt her, I’m going to be all over them.”

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Home is Where the Danger Is

During 1995, drownings were a chief source of danger to children in homes across the U.S. Here are some sources of lethal accidents and the number of children killed, as well as some other less likely causes:

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Home Child Killers

Drownings: 300

Cigarette lighters: 150

Poisonings: 50

Baby cribs: 46

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Odd Accidents

During several multiyear periods, some unlikely sources have proved to be child- killers:

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Sources Deaths Years Entrapment* 76 1980-88 Automatic garage doors 48 1982-91 Strings, cords, etc.** 34 1985-90 Toy boxes / chests 33 1973-88 Bunk beds 31 1973-88

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* In appliances, picnic coolers

** On pacificers, clothing, toys

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Some other Sources Deaths Bucket drownings 36 Plastic bags 14 Window blinds, cords 11 Hair dryers 10 Highchairs 3

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Safety Alert

* To receive information on any of the above products or a copy of the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s Product Safety Alert, write or call: CPSC, P.O. Box 21027, Seattle, WA 98111-3027; telephone number (206) 553-5276.

* For recorded safety tips and information about product recalls, or to report unsafe products, call (800) 638-2772, Monday through Friday.

Source: U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission; Researched by ANTONIO OLIVO / Los Angeles Times