Haase Reminds Homeowners to Heat Safely as Temperatures Drop

It’s late October – and that means it’s cooling off a bit
outside and frost is beginning to settle on our windshields. It’s also a strange
point in the year where people don’t know whether to run the air conditioning
or the heat. Division Chief of Fire Prevention Troy Haase points out that not
everyone is ready to turn on their furnace just yet. 

He says “this time
of year when it’s that fifties, some people might be trying to heat with
alternative things like a space heater or – I know my grandmother, a long time
ago, she’d always turn on the burners on her gas stove and heat up the kitchen
with the gas stove. So I know people try to use alternative methods, and that’s
not very safe as well.”

Haase adds that “if you’re using a space heater, make sure you have plenty of clearance around it. Make sure you plug it into an outlet, no extension cords, no power strips, right directly into the outlet to make sure you have that direct connection. Make sure there’s not animals and things around it. The new models have anti-tip, so if they get tipped they shut down.”

Haase also reminds homeowners to keep an eye on your furnace, and to double check the
batteries in your carbon monoxide detectors. 

He says newer furnace systems will “shut down if there’s a problem. But you’ve got
to make sure you’ve got the CO detector. When you start the furnaces up, make
sure you have a working CO detector on each level so you’re at least aware if
there’s an issue with your furnace, if there’s a problem with the burning
process – that it puts out CO, then you get alarmed and call someone to check
it.”

But Haase also mentions that not everyone feels the same effects when carbon monoxide is creeping into the home. 

He explains that “CO is one of those things that affects people at different ages and different sizes, so you might be feeling perfectly fine, but you might have a two-year old who’s not feeling perfectly fine. So we want to make sure that we’re checking – if they go off, call 911 and we’ll come and check it out.”