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Christmas House Fire? No!

Posted on by Salty and Spice
Christmas House Fire? No!
 
Tis the season to say no to Christmas house fires. Unfortunately, house fires and holidays seem to go hand-in-hand together.
 
Let’s not let all those carefully collected preps we have go up in smoke this year (or any year for that matter!).

I watched it burn

I would have been 13 years old when I saw it happening, a fire raging in our neighbor’s house across the street. 
 
It was a bitterly cold but clear Christmas morning, about 10:00, when we heard sirens wailing and coming closer to us. 
 
We put down our new Christmas toys and went to the frost-encased front window. My mother went to the kitchen and grabbed a metal spatula, and scraped the frost off so we could look out.
 
A pall of black smoke was pouring out of our neighbors house, while they stood there in their night, pajamas, robes and slippers shivering from the bitter cold, staring on in shock.
 
My fully-dressed father grabbed his coat and his “old coat” and ran outside, handing his coat to the father of the neighbor’s family, then steering the mother and four children back to our house. Fortunately, it was just cold, there wasn’t snow, so the going up the small hill to our hose was easy, and we got them out of the cold. My father went back with one of his insulated flight suits, some boots and a hat, and got the neighbor dressed as we all watch out the window.
 
As you can imagine, the neighbors were in shock, and as that wore off it turned into absolute pandemonium as the children (all younger than me) tried to grasp what was happening. 
 
The house was well involved by this time, and there was major damage to the structure… everything inside was a complete write-off.
Fire

Stats don’t lie

Statistics as reported by the National Fire Prevention Association bear these concerns out: 
  • 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.
The Red Cross shares some good tips on fire preparedness… They remind everybody the importance of checking your smoke detectors every month. Reliable smoke and carbon monoxide detectors are very, very inexpensive these days, and every home should have multiples of each, tested regularly.

One critically important prep for fire prevention

By far, bar none, the single most important fire fighting prep that anybody can have in their home or auto is also one that’s generally forgotten about and ignored.

What is it? The boring old fire extinguisher… a FRESH one… 

fire

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?

How about a story?

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.

Protect critical documents

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.

Salty and Spice

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One Comment

  1. At one time I was a FFighter/EMT on a Rescue truck. One of the things we were taught was that from the time a flame appears and to a 1000 degree temp at the ceiling was 5 minutes.

    So,
    fresh extinguishers = YES
    putting them close to but not next to things like a stove = YES
    realizing when you’ve lost and need to leave = YES
    calling the Fire Dept = YES
    Some folks say call the Fire Dept then use extinguisher others say empty the extinguisher and call while leaving.
    Either way remember 5 minutes till 1000 degrees so be quick about it.

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