Local public safety officials will be baking cookies and roasting s'mores today - inside a car.

"It really does get hot enough to melt the s'mores and even to bake cookies, depending, of course, on how hot the day is," said Kelley Robertson, a volunteer policy director with Safe Kids Gainesville-Hall County.

And if it's that hot in a car, it's certainly not a good place to leave your child.

The demonstration is set for 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. today at the Featherbone Communiversity in Gainesville.

"(It) kind of shows the parents a little different perspective, ‘wow, it does get this hot this fast in a vehicle,'" Gainesville Police officer Kevin Holbrook said. "... children unattended in a vehicle even for a small amount of time can have deadly repercussions."

Robertson said Safe Kids officials earlier this week did their own experiment and found that in a very short period of time, the inside of a car rose to 128 degrees when it was 93 degrees outside.

Mohak Davé, an emergency medicine doctor at Northeast Georgia Medical Center, said a child can develop heat exhaustion within 15 minutes when the temperature in a car is 110 degrees.

As a child's body temperature rises to between 100 and 104 degrees, they will show symptoms of heat exhaustion, such as fatigue, weakness and even vomiting, he said. As their body temperature rises above 104 degrees, they can suffer heat stroke, where they can be comatose, they stop sweating and their mental state will change.

Also, because children's thermoregulation (sweating) systems are immature, they are more at risk.

Fortunately, Holbrook said police don't get regular reports of children left unattended in vehicles, but it does happen.

"Many times we do get more reports in the summer months as opposed to other months of the year just because people are generally more aware of the heat index," he said.

And those who do it can face charges ranging from reckless conduct to child abuse, depending on how badly the child is injured.

But even leaving a child in the car in cooler months causes concern for local officials.

"It's just as bad," Holbrook said.

Temperatures can still be high inside a car during spring or fall. And in the winter, temperatures can be too cold.

Other dangers include children accidentally throwing a vehicle into gear, which Holbrook said has happened a number of times. And by leaving a child, you never know who may come by and possibly take the child, he added.