Heat warning stickers are going up on Florida gas pumps

As heat advisories continue, motorists fueling up across Florida will soon see stickers on gas pumps warning against leaving children and pets in vehicles.

“This time of year when all of our families are getting back to school, we know that everybody’s busy. It’s a change in schedule,” Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson said Friday before placing a sticker on a pump at a BP station in Titusville. “We want to make sure that people are removing their pets out of these cars, that they’re removing their kids out of these cars,”

Simpson’s Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services oversees regulation of gas pumps. The stickers were an idea of Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey.

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“It goes back to just a constant reminder to make sure that you’re not doing it (leaving children and pets in hot vehicles),” Ivey said.

“Again, we all, you know (say), ‘I’m just gonna run in the store for a moment. I’m going to be right back out.’ And then something happens that you’re in there longer than you anticipate.”

A 2016 Florida law allows bystanders to break windows of vehicles to rescue pets or vulnerable people believed to be in danger from heat.