LAKE COUNTY — Twinkling lights, the smell of cookies baking and time spent in front of a crackling fire ? all sure signs that the winter season is here. Under the wrong circumstances, they can quickly become electrical fires, shrieking smoke alarms and dangerous chimney flue leaks. Home safety experts offered tips to avoid fire hazards during the holidays.
Kelseyville fire chief Howard Strickler said the three most common causes of house fires are heating appliances, electrical shorts and dropped cigarettes or stray embers. Outlets should be checked for proper grounding and loose connections. Having the right kind of smoke alarms in the right places is key. Strickler said proper Christmas tree care can help prevent a fire.
“Buy your tree as late as possible,” Strickler said. “Try to get one that”s fresh-cut and hasn”t sat on a lot and frozen, because that can dry them out quickly. Keep them in water, and water them regularly so the tree can absorb it through the base. And not to sound like a Grinch, but take the tree out shortly after Christmas. Don”t leave it there three or four weeks after Christmas.”
In addition, Strickler recommended using cool-burning LED Christmas lights. “They”re low-voltage, they last a long time and they”re zero-heat, so they are not hot to the touch,” Strickler said.
As for the roaring fire, Strickler said that sound is what typically alerts people of a stopped up chimney flue. Strickler recommended cleaning the carbon buildup from the inside of a fireplace flue twice a year. Strickler cautioned against using store-bought logs that promise to clean to clean the chimney, and instead recommended hiring a chimney sweep. “They”re (chimney cleaning logs) not as efficient as they say they are, and when you clean the chimney that way, you”re not getting an inspection done,” Strickler said.
An inspection by a sweep would find cracks in the masonry of an older fireplace and leaks in the chimney flue that could lead to house fires. “A leak allows fire to escape into the attic space or wall space in a house,” Strickler said.
A clogged chimney can also mean carbon monoxide from smoldering coals isn”t ventilated properly. Carbon monoxide is a colorless, odorless, deadly gas emitted during partial combustion, such as when embers are burning on the bottom of a wood stove. “If you have any type of heating system with any type of open flame ? a gas furnace, a wood stove, kerosene heaters, fireplaces where there”s active combustion ? all can cause production of carbon monoxide,” Strickler said. He recommended having a carbon monoxide detector, designed to sense high levels of the otherwise undetectable gas. Strickler advised calling 9-1-1 when the detector alarms.
Checking batteries in smoke alarms is recommended twice a year in older models. But attention should be given to what kind of alarms are used and where they are placed.
As the owner of Lifetime Controls, a supplier of security devices nationwide, Lakeport resident David Kimmich has installed numerous security systems, including smoke alarms. Ionization detectors are cheapest and most common type of smoke alarm, Kimmich said, but he doesn”t recommend them. “I personally have been in a house where someone left a pot on the stove, and there was three and a half feet of gray smoke on the ceiling, and their ionization detector had not gone off because there was no combustion. And the person was asleep in the bedroom,” Kimmich said. Instead, Kimmich recommends either a photoelectric detector or a combination ionization detector and photoelectric. Photoelectric detectors look for the density of particulate matter in the air, Kimmich said. Ionization detectors pick up ions given off by combustion.
“If you have a fast-, clean-burning fire in your bedroom, an ionization detector will pick it up faster than a photoelectric,” Kimmich said. He recommended putting smoke detectors in hallways outside of living areas at a minimum. “Preferably there would be one in every single bedroom, as well,” Kimmich said.
Contact Tiffany Revelle at trevelle@record-bee.com
