- Between 2011-2015, U.S. fire departments responded to an average 200 home fires that started with Christmas trees per year. These fires caused an average of 6 deaths, 16 injuries, and $14.8 million in direct property damage annually.
- On average, one of every 32 reported home fires that began with a Christmas tree resulted in a death, compared to an average of one death per 143 total reported home fires.
- Electrical distribution or lighting equipment was involved in two of every five (40%) of home Christmas tree fires.
- In one-quarter (26%) of the Christmas tree fires and in 80% of the deaths, some type of heat source, such as a candle or equipment, was too close to the tree.
- One quarter (24%) of Christmas tree fires were intentional.
- Forty-two percent of reported home Christmas tree fires occurred in December and 37% were reported in January.
- More than one-third (37%) home Christmas tree fires started in the living room, family room, or den.
What is it? The boring old fire extinguisher… a FRESH one…
Do you have one? Is it fresh? You know that they don’t stay good forever, right? Do you know where it/they are? Can you get to them in the case of emergency?
Let me tell you a story about a woman I know who lost her house a couple of months ago to a grease fire. She got a big grease fire on her stove. Her first reaction was to grab her 6-month old fire extinguisher to put it out. BUT... she had located it right next to the stove, and couldn’t approach the area because the fire was too hot… SO… she grabbed her OLD fire extinguisher, pulled the pin and… NOTHING. Turns out her old one was 25 years old, and it no longer worked. the nearby window drapes caught fire and before the department arrived to put out the blaze the house was engulfed.
Fire extinguishers are simple technology, they are cheap enough to own SEVERAL and to keep them fresh.
Every home should have SEVERAL (even if they are just the inexpensive ones), as should every vehicle.
How you doing on yours… and while you are at it, how are your smoke detectors, are they good?
Spice’s Two Cents
I do some volunteer work for the Red Cross that has me looking at the records of assistance provided. Every day of the year people in my region lose all they own to fire; and the numbers triple when the heaters come on in the winter. I’m always surprised, reading the reports, by how many people didn’t realize anything was wrong until the situation was beyond recovery. They didn’t have alarms; or didn’t have alarms at the right places.
Depending on your source of heat, carbon monoxide monitors are well worth the investment, too. Carbon monoxide is produced by a fire that’s not getting enough oxygen, so you usually get it with heaters that burn fuel (such as propane heaters) in tightly closed houses or fireplaces or heaters that have circulation problems. We have one, because our back-up heat source is propane.
Important papers and some emergency cash are kept in a little fire box, both so it’s likely to survive a fire (or the water damage that usually comes even with more minor fires) and so we can grab everything easily if we have to go. The box also has spare keys to the cars and The Place. As a bonus, it’s easy to find the car titles are easy to find…
As preppers, we’ve got more of our savings in material goods than average. It only makes sense for us to take precautions against the single thing most likely to destroy those preps.