NEW ORLEANS —
People may be wearing shorts and short sleeves lately, but temperatures are expected to drop like a stone. With the colder weather often comes fires.
The first tip to avoid one: be careful with space heaters.
“If you are using a space heater, make sure you don’t put it on carpet, you don’t have kids or pets playing around that space heater and that you unplug it and turn it off when you leave the room,” said Kathryne Sandusky with the Red Cross.
Also, don’t even think about plugging that space heater into an extension cord.
“Always make sure you plug space heaters directly into the wall,” said Capt. Edwin Holmes with the New Orleans Fire Deptartment. “They get extremely hot. They could burn up a small extension cord.”
Fires can also start if your heater is not maintained properly.
“Because you not getting a proper air flow and if you are not getting a proper air flow over the heating curls that also can cause fires and the wires to burn,” said Jerard Brumfield with Premiere Air Conditioning & Heating.
It might seem like common sense but never use your oven or stove to heat your house and always have a smoke alarm installed and make sure you check it.
“Most times people only have two minutes to escape a home fire before it becomes a fatality and so just having that notification is a life saver,” said Sandusky.
The Red Cross has been busy doing free smoke alarm installs. They say their “Sound The Alarm” campaign has saved lives.
“Just here in Louisiana since the start of our ‘Sound The Alarm’ program in 2014, we’ve seen 19 lives saved by those smoke alarms that were installed,” said Sandusky.
You can get free smoke alarms by calling the Red Cross at 1-800 Red Cross. They will send someone out to install it for you. Also, NOFD does these same type of installation. It is free for any resident in Orleans Parish.
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