How to Prevent House Fires and Carbon Monoxide Poisoning
The other commonly overlooked danger is chimney cleaning or checking. Every season you should have your chimney checked especially if you have a fireplace. It is many times not done because of the expense.
If you have cats, dogs or rabbits, or any rodents, it is very important to watch for chewed cords. Even if you don’t have animals check for frayed worn or damaged cords. Cords on appliances or curling irons, toasters should be routinely checked just to make sure they are not worn. I always keep my curling iron and hair dryer unplugged when I am not using it. Now that I am getting older and more senile, I recheck because I am never sure if I have remembered to unplug it or not.
Space heaters can be a real hazard. They can get knocked over or just overheat. I am really nervous around them. Also kerosene heaters and candles can be deadly. I am afraid of candles, of course I have reason to be. I caught myself on fire at my daughter’s wedding. That is another story, maybe for America’s Funniest Home Videos, but then that is another story. Please if you have a hard time remembering things, keep lit candles on the stove or on a very protected area.
Then there is the horror of leaving nail polish anywhere near the stove. I came out to the kitchen just in time to see fire spreading across the kitchen counter and a bottle of nail polish melting and burning. I was able to put it out, but if I had come out a minute later, even thirty seconds later I shudder to think of what would have happened. Never leave nail polishes anywhere near a flame of any sort.
Friends of ours have a house built by the same builder and same house style as us. One night they went to bed and didn’t go to work or school the next day. Because they are such dependable people, when the son didn’t show up to school and the father was supposed to be working on an unrelated job at that school, one of his fellow employees got suspicious. They called where the wife worked and she wasn’t there either. Their daughter in high school was absent also.
He and a neighbor knocked down the door and found them all asphyxiated. They after long touch and go months recovered. They wife suffered a stroke and both parents suffered some brain damage.
We put in a carbon monoxide detector immediately after this happened. Fortunately for us we did because if we didn’t we would have been asphyxiated too. Our detector went off on one of the coldest nights of the year before Christmas. Our furnace was the culprit, and before that about a year before, the hot water heater about killed us with a cracked pipe. We were very fortunate and grateful. A carbon monoxide detector is a small price to pay for security and safety from asphixiation.
These are few things to think of when it comes to fire safety. There are the other obvious ones. Don’t leave matches or lighters anywhere near children. Don’t leave candles burning where children or pets can get to them. Even curtains in the breeze can blow into a candle and cause a fire.
I set a timer all the time on the stove or oven, because I forget things, I attribute it to age, but then again I am very busy, so it prevents burning the house down. It prevents burning dinner too.
I set myself on fire one other time too. I was reaching up in a cupboard, and caught my blouse on fire. I was able to put it out quickly, but it was a lesson, in flammable clothing, and reaching up over a burner. Am I careless or what?
I have known people who have died in fires because of leaving candles burning. I also lost a dear friend whom I graduated with in a house fire thirty years ago. The last time I saw him he came home from Viet Nam. He was with his pregnant wife and glad to be home safe. They had two children less than a year apart. I had a daughter the same age so it hit me very hard.
They went to bed one night and Bob woke up and smelled smoke. He told his wife to go his parents’ house next door to get help. He went for the children. They had to tear her away from running in after her husband and children. She was burned and they were afraid she might be blinded. She later recovered but had some nasty scars. He and the two children died of smoke inhalation. It was a hideous tragedy. They discovered their cat chewing a cord behind the couch caused the fire.
My son’s orthodontist and his wife built a huge house that cost more than I will make in a lifetime. They have an extensive art collection, which includes a couple of pieces of sculpture that I done for them. Not long after they moved in their house burnt because of a chimney fire. After long months of rebuilding they moved back in near Thanksgiving. Just a month ago their house burnt to the ground, because of another chimney fire. What a horrible thing to happen, because of the snow the fire engines did not have easy access to them and they had to pump water out of the lake. They lost everything, but their three cats thank God. I don’t know how they could have prevented it, and it is a terrible tragedy, but at least they and their pets were spared.
When you lose so much of your personal mementos and such they cannot be replaced. But of course lives are the most important, we still want to prevent losing our homes and want security that we are doing the best we can to protect ourselves.
It is also important to plan an escape route if you have a house fire. There are many ways of doing that. Maybe that will come up in another article.
