Henry Maxwell and Sue Heap.
Photo / Kellie Blizard
Henry Maxwell and Sue Heap.
Photo / Kellie Blizard
An Auckland couple has won the support of the Fire Service for their 12-year crusade to get a child-safe cigarette lighter into production.
Henry Maxwell embarked on the campaign after his nieces and nephews started a house fire while playing with a lighter. The children were rolling its flint wheelon the ground and making sparks, which set the curtains alight, starting a fire that extensively damaged the Northland house.
In 1998, Maxwell created a lighter with a switch but failed to attract the interest of smokers who did not want a two-step process. So he went to China several times and worked in manufacturing companies to learn how lighters worked.
His partner Sue Heap, a teacher, researched safety standards and regulations nationally and worldwide and the couple borrowed almost $1 million from family and friends.
Maxwell thought he had hit the jackpot in 2002 when he created a lighter with a brake on the flint wheel which required a certain amount of pressure to unlock. He and Heap have spent thousands of hours presenting the product to government agencies, testing laboratories, fire departments and consumer bodies. And at last someone is listening.
The New Zealand Fire Service's national manager of fire investigation and arson reduction, Peter Wilding, said he supported Maxwell's lighter and hoped it could be presented at a meeting with Consumer Affairs, the Commerce Commission, Kids Safe and the Burns Unit to improve lighter regulations.
"Henry's invention is well designed and the angle even prevents the wheel from rolling along the ground," Wilding said. "It also needs a bit of strength to roll the wheel."
A survey conducted last month revealed at least 19 stores in Auckland were selling non-compliant lighters.
