LOVINGTON — After the first of the year, the city of Lovington can count itself among the many cities with Safe Haven Baby Boxes.
Lovington’s will be located at Fire Station 2, 1424 N. 17th St.
Safe Haven Baby Boxes is a national organization whose mission is “to prevent illegal abandonment of newborns by raising awareness, offering a 24-hour hotline for mothers in crisis and offering the Safe Haven Baby Boxes as a last resort option for women who want to maintain complete anonymity,” its website says.
Babies can’t be older than 90 days.
Fire Chief Skip Moorhead said the reason Lovington decided to do it is because Hobbs has had three babies surrendered to their Baby Box.
“There’ve been more in the state, besides just Hobbs. And I want to be honest, I would rather get a baby out of a Baby Box than out of a trash can. We want to give people better options of surrender,” Moorhead said.
The box is temperature regulated.
When you open the Baby Box door and place a baby inside the temperature-controlled bassinet, the door automatically locks.
“When you open the door from the outside, it sets a silent alarm. Then when you put the baby in the box, it has another alarm for the weight of the baby.
When something gets in the box it sends another silent alarm. Once they close the outside door, they can’t open it back up. At that point, they’ve surrendered it. They can’t get it back, Moorhead said.
“The way we do (it) is we get the baby out of the box, because it sends a silent alarm to dispatch, but it’ll also send an alarm to myself on my phone, and then our EMTs take the baby out. They take the whole bassinet out of the Baby Box, and at that point they take care of the baby. They take it to the hospital and get it checked out,” he added.
“This is just giving those people who do have that baby that can’t take care of a better option.” Moorhead said.
If everything is fine with the baby, it is surrendered to the state Children, Youth and Families Department (CYFD).
Someone can’t try to take the baby back from the fire department once the box is locked.
“… By law, we can’t (give the baby back), because when they close that box and it’s locked, they’ve surrendered that baby. They would have to go through CYFD to get that baby back. The way the box works is there are no cameras around … It is 100% anonymous,” Moorhead said.
There have been several instances of babies found in trash cans or bathrooms either in Hobbs or Artesia, he added.
People who place babies in the Baby Boxes remain anonymous. There are no cameras at the 17th Street fire station.
People can go to any fire, police department or hospital and surrender their baby, but it’s not anonymous.
“This is … completely anonymous,” Moorhead said.
The fire department has the Baby Box and is waiting for state permits to be issued.
Once the Safe Haven Baby Box is installed, representatives from the organization will provide training for the Lovington Fire Department.
The department has a total of 29 employees.
(The) permits have to be done correctly and everything has to be done to the ‘T. The box will have to be tested every week.” Moorhead said.
“The reason being is because we want to make sure all the alarms and everything are working correctly, so if a baby is put in there, we know those alarms and everything are working tip top,” he added.