(February 8, 2006) -- Preventing children from playing with matches and lighters is important...and LBFD says what happened in NLB on Feb. 7 provides another reason why. LBFD Battalion Chief/Public Information Officer Jeff Reeb says in a release that firefighters responded to an afternoon structure fire in the 6100 block of LB Blvd. which began outside a two-story apartment building in a collection of discarded boxes.

LBFD Photo

The blaze damaged the building's exterior and quickly spread inside, with flames and smoke leaving the premises uninhabitable for now and displacing two families.

LBFD says it believes the origin of the fire was an unsupervised 10-year old boy who was amusing himself with a butane lighter.

LBFD says parents with small children should "remove stray matches and lighters from throughout the home, involve your children in supervised use of matches to satisfy their curiosity and stress to them in simple terms that matches are tools. not toys."