Prince George’s County Fire Chief Lawrence Sedgwick is pushing for legislation in Maryland that would compel tobacco companies to ship fire-safe cigarettes to smokers.

Sedgwick announced his plan after several cigarette-related burn injuries and one death in a four-day period.

Six states have laws requiring tobacco companies to sell fire-safe cigarettes, products that burn more slowly when left unattended, to customers, according to Mark Brady, spokesman for the county’s Fire?EMS Department.

"We definitely need to move forward with legislation here to do the same thing," Brady said. "We can save lives and we can save property."

New York, California, Illinois, Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts have fire-safe cigarette laws.

"Each day that it takes to switch to this life-saving technology is another day of increased risk, not only to smokers, their families and their neighbors, but also to the firefighters who respond to fires that could have been prevented," Sedgwick said.

"As a fire chief, I am outraged that cigarette products are manufactured and available that would save lives and reduce property loss, however are only distributed in six states."

Two such cigarette-related incidents occurred in Prince George’s. An elderly female living in Clinton had a lighted cigarette ignite her clothing Nov. 24, causing her serious injury.

On Nov. 28, a lighted and discarded cigarette set fire to a porch in Mount Rainier, injuring one person, displacing nine and causing $100,000 damage.

A fatality occurred in Bethesda, in Montgomery County, on Nov. 24, when an elderly female died from injuries she sustained after a lighted cigarette ignited her clothing.

Since 2004 there have been 13 fire fatalities in Prince George’s attributed to cigarettes and other smoking materials.

The National Fire Protection Association reports that about 800 people in the United States die every year from fires caused by lighted cigarettes. Smoking materials like cigarettes also remain the No. 1 cause of fire-related deaths nationwide, the association reported.