AMES, Iowa --
Cigarette fires are the leading cause of fire-related deaths for the last 30 years in Iowa, but a new state law is intended to reduce those fires.
Most packages and cartons of cigarettes on the shelves today already comply with the new state law. The small "FSC" printed on the label indicates they are fire-safe cigarettes and are less likely to spark a fire.
"Well, each year there's hundreds of lives that are lost due to smoking and careless smoking and smoking material. Along with that, there's hundreds of millions of dollars of property loss," said Lt. Seth Twedt with the Ames Fire Department.
In the last three years, Ames firefighters responded to seven fires started by cigarettes. Statewide, twice as many people died this year in fires caused by careless smoking as compared to last year.
"Five years ago we had one gentleman smoking in bed fell asleep. The cigarette caught his bed on fire. The bed caught the rest of the apartment on fire," said Twedt.
Twedt said by the time they arrived on scene, one person was dead and several others were hanging out their apartment windows trying to escape the smoke and flames. It would have been a different story if the cigarette had extinguished itself.
"In that case, that would have been a great help so, one person's actions tends to affect several more," said Twedt.
"There is a visual difference between a fire-safe and a regular cigarette. The fire-safe version is wrapped with two or three thin bands of less-porous paper to help extinguish the cigarette." It's a difference smokers don't like.
"They're about the same, but they go out a lot faster and many more times," said Tim Hardman.
"They do tend to go out, but it's not that big of a deal, if you're a smoker you'll smoke it anyways," said Tyler Wrabeck.
Some smokers don't like the flavor of the fire-safe cigarettes, but other smokers say they really haven't noticed a big difference and agree with the concept of a cigarette that is designed to self-extinguish.
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