A box in the lobby of a Sunbury fire station that allows parents to surrender newborn children anonymously and safely without facing criminal charges is again available for use after being closed because of legal issues.

A section of the state budget approved in June 2023 amended an Ohio Department of Health regulation issued in 2022 requiring locations of Safe Haven Baby Boxes to be staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The amendment allows video monitoring of the boxes, which are located in hospitals and fire and police departments.

“This means that in cases when a fire is severe enough that every firefighter in the station is needed, we don’t have to leave one behind to watch the box,” said Rob Stambaugh, assistant chief of the BST&G Fire District in Sunbury, the only location in central Ohio with one of the boxes. There are 11 of the boxes in Ohio, with the rest in the state’s northwest and southwest regions.

The boxes work like the drop boxes found at banks, post offices and libraries. They are equipped with safeguards to protect the identity of anyone leaving an infant inside the box and an alarm to alert firefighters or hospital workers that a newborn was placed inside. 

“Our department’s dispatch center and the police station are a minute or two away from the fire station, so personnel from there can go immediately to the firehouse to open the box if our station is unstaffed,” Stambaugh said. “An alarm on our trucks which is linked with the station lets us know the box is being used.”

At the Sunbury station and most locations, the box is built into an exterior wall. Once a newborn is placed into a bassinet in the temperature-controlled box, a silent signal is sent to 911 after the outside door closes to protect the identity of the parent.

Usually within two minutes, an emergency medical technician (EMT) or medical staff person accesses the baby through an inside door. The child is immediately evaluated and taken to receive hospital care. 

The boxes are an outgrowth of safe haven laws in all 50 states that allow parents to anonymously surrender a child to authorities within 72 hours of its birth and not be charged with abandoning the child.

Monica Kelsey, an EMT and firefighter from Woodburn, Indiana, near the Ohio border, came up with the idea for the boxes, the first of which was installed in an Indiana fire station in 2016.

Stambaugh heard about the boxes from a friend in Indiana, received approval to have one installed in Sunbury and raised $15,000 to cover its cost. No tax money was used. Local contractors provided materials and labor and the fire district received a grant from the Discount Tire Driven to Care Foundation to help cover expenses.

The fire district serves Sunbury, Galena, Berkshire Township and Trenton Township in Delaware County.

The box was blessed in January 2021 and was shut down in the summer of 2022 for alarm repairs. The repairs were completed in October, but the box remained closed because of the state ruling.

Kelsey said state Reps. Jean Schmidt, R-Loveland, and Adam Mathews, R-Lebanon, were responsible for the law change that allowed the Ohio boxes to be reopened. “We thought the boxes as they were set up had been following the law in Ohio,” she said. “When the state issued its restrictions, we were fortunate to have legislators who immediately went to work on the problem.”

She said there are now 191 boxes in 14 states – Ohio, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Mississippi, North Carolina, Iowa, Missouri and West Virginia – with Kansas, Texas and Alabama to be added to that list by the end of March. Arizona uses a similar system known as baby drawers. 

She said that since the baby box program began eight years ago, 133 babies have been handed over under safe haven laws at sites where the boxes are located. This includes 39 placed in boxes – 17 of them in 2023 and eight the previous year.

“This also means 133 sets of parents have been saved by being able to hand over their children anonymously, safely and lovingly in crisis situations,” Kelsey said. “The decision is not without pain, but it’s one in which the parent wins, the child wins and the adoptive parents win.”

Stambaugh said no newborns have been placed in the Sunbury fire station’s box and hopes no one will feel the need to use it. “But the bottom line is that we as a fire department are in the business of saving lives, no matter what the method,” he said. “Having the box available is much like having the fire department on hand – nobody thinks about most of the time, but they’re glad to have it and grateful it’s there when it’s needed.”