With colder temperatures on the way, there are some safety measures to follow to prevent fires due to heating sources.
Steve Henrichson is a Fire Inspector with the St. Joseph Fire Department. Henrichson said, nationally, fires related to space heaters are a major issue but locally, it has not been a problem in the past few years with about one or two reported per year. However, a fire about five years ago caused by a space heater too close to a curtain resulted in the deaths of four residents.
Henrichson said the most important thing to do with any heating source is to give it three feet of space.
“Space heater, water heater, things like that, just because of the radiant heat over time… it can cause problems,” Henrichson said. “Fireplaces… say, somebody has a rocking chair or something that’s in the same area, been there for years and years and all of a sudden it bursts into flames, it’s what we call pyrolysis. It’s just a slow decay of a piece of wood getting heated up over time, it just slowly deteriorates to the point where one day it decides to actually start on fire.”
Henrichson said it’s also important to plug things like space heaters directly into the wall and to check lights when putting up holiday decorations.
“The biggest thing with Christmas lights is making sure they’re in good repair,” Henrichson said. “Live (Christmas) trees, be really careful, make sure they’ve got plenty of water because a live tree, once it dries out will go up quick.”
Henrichson said to also test your smoke and carbon monoxide detectors to make sure they’re working properly.
“Almost 20 years I’ve been an investigator and I’ve never gone into a house that had a working smoke detector that had a fatality in it,” Henrichson said. “You should have just changed your batteries with ‘Change your clock, change your batteries,’ but after 10 years smoke detectors need to be taken and replaced just because they are a mechanical device that after 10 years of running 24/7 they lose their effectiveness and efficiency.”
For more winter heating safety tips, visit the National Fire Protection Association website.