Keep Warm, Stay Safe
By: Mitch Carr
Updated: October 13, 2009
With temperatures dropping over the weekend, there were a number of people who built their first fire of the season. Others turned on their furnace for the first time in months.
The fire department says this time of year always causes a spike in the number of house fires. Fire officials say these accidents are easily avoided.
If you have a fire place, check the chimney and make sure it's clean. If you have a furnace or gas heater, have professionals do routine maintenance on it. And if you have an electric space heater, make sure it has three to four feet of clearance from all objects.
But as long as you use these methods of heating your home, there's one way to avoid tragedy.
"We're imperfect and machines are imperfect, so we're going to have problems with those. what we need is some kind of insurance so that if we have that problem in our home that we're going to be able to get up and get out, so that's why we need a working smoke detector," said Garrett Nelson of the Fire Department.
Nelson says a large percentage of fire deaths every year can be prevented by installing smoke detectors.
