Precautionary measures can prevent home fires

WASILLA -- Although the exact cause of Wednesday's house fire in Wasilla remains uncertain, according to Battalion Chief Michael Keenan of the Central Mat-Su Fire Department, there were indications that the origin may have been electrical in nature.

"By far the most frequent cause of electrical home fires is overloaded circuits," Keenan said Thursday.

"Circuits are designed to accommodate two items per outlet," he added. "Using multiple plugs and power strips greatly increases the likelihood of fire."

According to Keenan, appliance and other electrical cords should never be bound tightly or bunched so that resistance heating builds up and cannot be dispersed.

"Don't run cords under rugs or under furniture where they can be pinched," he warned. "And never coil them tightly together."

Keenan stressed that appliances should be UL listed, especially if they are older. Newer appliances will have the information on the packaging, but buyers should use caution when they get appliances from garage sales or other sources of used items.

UL listing information can be found in a variety of places on the items, such as tags on the cords and stamped or printed information on the items themselves.

Keenan went on to add that, as temperatures drop, space heaters in homes present another significant danger and frequent cause of house fires.

"Make sure that you keep combustibles away from space heaters," he said. "Give them plenty of clearance."

Working smoke detectors are critical, he said.

"You need a working smoke detector in every sleeping area, especially in children's bedrooms," he

advised.

"Make sure you have at least one on each level of the house. If they are battery powered, make it a habit to change the batteries regularly twice a year when you change your clocks over."

And don't think it can't happen to you.

According to Keenan, a fire department somewhere in the United States responds to a fire every 18 seconds.

Education pays off

According to a recent press release from the nonprofit National Fire Protection Association, fire deaths in U.S. homes dropped 9.1 percent in 2001 from the previous year. In all, 3,110 perished in home fires, the place we feel safest, and another 3,086 fire fatalities occurred elsewhere for a total of 6,196 fire deaths. Of these, 2,451 occurred due to the fires started by the attacks on America on Sept. 11, 2001.

Nationwide, there was a home fire death every 170 minutes during 2001, compared with every 153 minutes for the previous year.

Since 1977, NFPA has collected data from U.S. fire departments to produce the yearly Fire Loss report, which cites fire data relating to deaths, injuries, locations, trends and analyses.

Overall, home fires have declined fairly steadily since 1978 and were down by nearly half in 2001. Only 1999 had a lower home fire death total (2,895) in the past quarter-century.

The decline is attributed to increasing public safety education coupled with advances in fire-safety technology.

Other major findings from the 2001 report:

Number of fires: 1,734,500 fires were attended by public fire departments, a slight increase of 1.6 percent from the previous year. Of these 396,500 were home fires.

Injuries: Nationwide, there was a reported fire injury in the home every 34 minutes, compared with every 23 minutes in 2000.

Property damage: $5,643,000 in direct property damage occurred from fires in homes.