Keep Your Holiday Safe This Season With Tips From WVU Fire Service Extension 

Thanksgiving is right around the corner, ushering in the holiday season. It’s a wonderful time for family and friends to come together, but it’s also a time to be aware of fire safety around the home.

Mark Lambert, director of the West Virginia University (WVU) Fire Service Extension, spoke with Chris Schulz about some things to keep in mind as we spend more time in the kitchen and around the fireplace.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Schulz: Let’s start with the big one that catches people’s attention and has been catching people’s attention for years. Can you talk to me a little bit about safety around turkey preparation? I’m thinking specifically about deep frying a turkey.

Lambert: When frying anything, water and frying don’t get along. A lot of people were taught that when they were young: a grease fire, you put a towel over it, because water would just expand it. When you’re talking about a turkey, and it may still be frozen, it’s obviously going to be wet, but when you drop that turkey, 10, 15, 20 pounds into that boiling oil, it just creates a volcano of boiling oil, and it’s very, very dangerous. 

I know there have been people that have been seriously injured or lost their lives across the country over this, but if you use a little common sense, it’s a great way to fix a turkey. And using common sense in the sense that you keep water away from it, you realize you’re dealing with boiling oil. Keep small kids, keep pets away from wherever you’re doing it outside. You want to have proper ventilation if you’re using a gas fired burner to heat the oil. And just use a lot of common sense and follow the instructions, obviously, if that’s the way you want to cook a turkey.

Schulz: What about just your average Thanksgiving dinner? What are some general tips that people should keep in mind when it comes to fire safety and best practices around not just Thanksgiving, but the holidays in general? 

Lambert: I’ll step outside the kitchen, and then we’ll go back to the kitchen, is candles. People light candles, whether it’s for the scent or for the atmosphere, and then they forget about them in rooms, and this can lead to problems. And having small children in the house or pets around candles is another issue, where they might knock them over, knock them into something, play with them, and you end up having a fire. 

As far as the kitchen, you’re right, the oven’s on. There may be a lot of people in there moving around. If you forget that the oven’s on, then obviously you could burn something. The same with pots on the stove. You want to keep, again, small children and animals away from the stove, turn the pot handles towards the back of the stove, because you don’t want them knocking something over and getting hurt. You don’t want to spend your holiday in a burn center.

Schulz: Going back to the frying, not everybody does it. But what are some of the other dangers of that initial contact between the turkey and the hot oil? Because we see these fires, what’s happening? 

Lambert: It’s the oil interacting with the water. A lot of times, these turkeys that have these massive explosions are frozen or still partially frozen, and that means there’s extra water in there, and water violently reacts with oil or grease. The other thing you get is, especially if you use an open flame to heat that oil, then that oil becomes fuel for a fire. And so then you’ve got open fire, if you have that volcano like effect with the turkey, well then you’ve got hot, hot oil running around. And then that oil becomes a fuel for a fire. Then you have open fire spreading around. 

I should also say, make sure if you have a kitchen fire extinguisher, it should meet the requirement for grease fires. You don’t want a water-based fire extinguisher for a kitchen. You want to make sure that whatever kind of fire extinguisher you get, that it has on the box or label that it is you can use it for grease fires. The other thing nowadays, they have fire towels that you can hang in your kitchen or somewhere around. And basically, if you have a grease fire, you throw that on it. It has chemicals in the towel to help put out the fire.

Schulz: You mentioned being prepared. Is there any other type of maintenance or preparation that people need to be aware of before they go turning on that oven that hasn’t been turned on in months, or turning on that stove that hasn’t been turned on in months, to ensure that they aren’t putting themselves and their structure at risk?

Lambert: Especially if it’s a gas-fired stove, you want to make sure that it’s still functioning properly, you don’t have any issues as far as the amount of gas going to the burners. You want to make sure of things like that. Another thing you see, especially as it’s getting colder with elderly and students, sometimes people want to turn on their stove burners for a heat source. Besides the fact you’re letting carbon monoxide into your house, when you crank those burners up to high and leave them, you can have issues with pets or other things in the area, because those are not designed to leave it high for long periods of time, because they’re not designed to heat your house or to heat the room. 

Not using items properly, whether it’s a stove or a space heater, will cause you problems. Some of the most horrible fires I saw as an assistant state fire marshal, fatalities around the holidays and in the winter, were people using radiant space heaters and not using them properly. You never leave a radiant space heater unattended. You may want it to warm up the house. I certainly wouldn’t go to sleep with one on. You want to make sure that the holidays come down to any other time of year as well, make sure you have common sense and make sure you know what you’re doing, that everything’s up to date and that everything’s working the way it should before enjoying the holiday. And like I said, a burn center is not the place you want to spend your holiday.

Schulz: Let’s move on to Christmas real quick. What are some things that people need to keep in mind as they’re putting up their holiday decorations?

Lambert: Make sure that lights or other products you buy are UL Listed “Underwriter’s Laboratory.” There will be a big ‘U’ and an ‘L’ on there, that way they at least meet a safety standard for the U.S.. If you have older lights, you’re unstringing them, you’re putting them up, and you’ve got lights going bad, or you’ve got sparks or electrical issues, you just throw those lights away. Don’t try to replace the bulbs. Lights are cheaper nowadays, you’re better off just to get rid of them than try to use them on a tree or in other areas like that. 

Also, with all of your Christmas arrangements, especially with candles, but even with electric lights, you don’t want things dangling. You don’t want things that kids or pets can grab and pull off onto them or pull off onto the floor. Again, candles should never be unattended. Incense burners should never be unattended. Radiant space heaters should never be unattended. With regard to a tree, if you’re going to get a live tree, you want to make sure you water it daily. You want to make sure you keep a check on that water, the leaves are not falling. You can go on YouTube and see some horrible videos of trees that dried out and caught on fire, and just a few common sense items can keep Christmas memorable in a good way, not a bad way.

Schulz:  It’s getting to be that temperature when people want their furnace to be on. Here in West Virginia, we still have a lot of wood burning apparatuses. What are some things that homeowners and other folks can do to ensure that their system is in good working order and not going to be a hazard? 

Lambert: Get your system inspected. If I had a fireplace, I would have it inspected yearly. You don’t want creosote buildup on the inside that can cause a fire in the chimney, or you don’t want some kind of issue with a blockage that puts carbon monoxide into the house. With a furnace, you want to get it checked if not, every year, every three years. The older it is, the more often, obviously, you want to get it checked to make sure it’s working in perfect order, and the burners are working, and that it’s not putting out excess carbon dioxide. 

Which leads me to, besides smoke detectors, you want to have carbon monoxide detectors on every floor in your house if you have a fuel fired heating or cooking source. If your house is all electric, then there’s really not a need for a carbon monoxide detector unless you’re doing something silly like grilling in the house or grilling on your front porch, which can put carbon monoxide into the house. That’s the main things. 

And again, with the radiant space heaters, if you’re going to use them to heat up an area in the house, especially when it gets really cold, never, never leave them unattended. Never leave them and go to bed at night. Definitely, you don’t want to leave them with small kids or animals around. And if you have a radiant space heater you use, my recommendation would be if it’s more than five to 10 years old, to get rid of it and get a newer one. There are a lot of nice features on newer radiant space heaters that try to combat some of these issues that we have with the older ones. But I would still never go to sleep with one.

Schulz: Is there anything else that I haven’t given you a chance to discuss regarding fire safety around the holidays and as temperatures are getting colder?

Lambert: No, I think you’ve covered it. Like I said, it’s just common sense and thinking about what you’re doing before you do it. Everybody wants to have fun at the holidays and hang out with family and friends, but do it in a safe manner. And if you think something’s dangerous, then think about it before you do it, and make sure that you have the proper instructions and the capabilities to do whatever it is.

Schulz: While we’re talking about people having fun, maybe people want to break from the family, go outside, light a fire, they shouldn’t be doing that this time of year. 

Lambert: No, no. This year, especially, I know we’ve had some rain, so everybody thinks, “Well, we’ve had a little bit of rain. Everything’s back to normal.” That’s not the way it is. We’re still under drought conditions. As I’ve said before, the forestry workers do a great job. We don’t need to give them anymore work than they already have. So I would not be burning outside at all right now.