Local Fire Officials Issue Warning For Space Heaters
Cooler weather is on the way to the River Region, which means some people will be using space heaters, but fire officials are urging people to be safe.
Around 25,000 residential fires and more than 300 deaths are caused each year by space heaters. Lt. Jason Cupps with Montgomery Fire and Rescue says most of these incidents are preventable.
“As long as you’re safe with them they work great but its just keeping that safety in mind, keeping children away from them, pets where they wont knock them over, most of them that are sold now have an automatic shut off when they are knocked over, always make sure that you do by them with that feature” he explains.
Experts say to keep space heaters at least 3 feet away from furniture or other materials that could catch fire like curtains, bedding, carpets or rugs. The safest place to plug in electric space heaters is directly into the wall, but if you must use an extension chord to power your space heater, make sure its a heavy duty one.
“You want to make sure that they are UL approved you will see the circle with the UL in there” says Lt. Cupps. He is also issuing a warning for those that plan to light up their fire place this year. “Its definitely recommended to get them cleaned once a year, I know a lot of people may not do that since they don’t use them that often but that build up over the years, can catch fire and be a bad situation”.
Cups says that while it may sound trivial, its always important to have an escape plan, in case your home does catch fire, and advises you to “develop that with your family and practice it at day and at night and that will help avoid confusion and everyone will know what to do in the event of a real emergency”.
Its also important to never fall asleep with a space heater on in your home, and because most fires happen in the middle of the night, now is a good time to make sure that your smoke detectors are working. Lt. Cupps says having a working smoke detector is the number one thing that you can do to increase your chance of surviving a house fire.
