fires
Preventing Office Fires (Infographics)
Which Fire Extinguisher Should I Use?
Teach your kids about Gasoline Fires to protect them
If he could, teenager Austin Bailiff would talk to every kid in the world about gas and fire. He knows what it’s like to think, “It can’t happen to me.” And he lives every day with the terrible reality that it can.
Share Austin’s videos with your kid. Sometimes, hearing stuff from other kids is more powerful than hearing it from us. That’s Austin’s hope. That’s why he tells his story.
Watch these videos with your kids. It just might save their life or keep them from a lifetime of pain from burns
Softener Sheets can be hazardous
You, like the rest of us, like your clothes to smell fresh and be soft so you throw in a dryer sheet designed specifically to do just that.
Problem is the dryer sheet may not only be sending your dryer to a premature death but might actually be dangerous. Why? Because those dryer sheets, over time, deposit a thin film over the lint filter that isn’t visible to the naked eye but that can cause your dryer to have to work harder and harder and may actually cause it to overheat (burning out the dryer or starting a fire).
Test your lint filter… take it out and drip water on it. The water should go straight through; if it doesn’t it’s because of the waxy build up.
To remedy the problem, just put together a maintenance schedule that includes washing the lint filter with soap and water and an old toothbrush.
It will not only extend the life of your dryer but also potentially prevent a fire.
For additional tips and hints on dryer maintenance and safety check out safetyathome.com’s “Dryer fires and how to prevent them“
Top Ten Things to Watch for at Home
Having just finished the “Deadly Dozen” of conditions and unsafe acts, as applied to the workplace, I wanted to now turn my attention to the home. I don’t have 12, but I do have 10.
The home is supposed to be a haven, a place of rest, a place of safety. Unfortunately, in many cases, it is anything but. It reminds me of the guy who moved 12 miles away from where he used to live. When asked by his friend why he moved he answered “I heard that 80% of accidents happen within 10 miles of your home so I moved 12 miles away”
There’s a guy who didn’t quite understand the nature of the problem. The truth of the matter is that a home can be a safe place with a better understanding of the nature of the issues that cause accidents in the home.
Today’s number one…
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Unattended cooking
I think that I’ve probably already mentioned it before… I have a relative who almost burned her house to the ground because she put some oil on the stove and ran upstairs while it was heating up and forgot about it. The result was a kitchen fire that almost destroyed the whole house. She was able to get herself and her son out of the house so no one was injured but a few more minutes and it might have been a whole lot worse. As it was it cost a lot of money and a lot of time to fix the smoke and water damage from the fire department. The truth is that unattended cooking is still the number one cause of home fires.
The Fix
- Don’t leave! I don’t care how good your memory is and how short a time you’re going to be gone, DO NOT LEAVE something on the stove and leave. It is simply to easy to get distracted and forget. It doesn’t take more than a few seconds for a fire to spread rapidly and become unmanageable.
- Always have a lid nearby. The fastest way to put out a fire once it has started is to starve it by putting a lid on the pan.
- Keep baking soda nearby as well. Baking soda will also starve a fire of oxygen and won’t cause splatters or explosions. NEVER PUT WATER ON A KITCHEN FIRE. Water and oil don’t mix and when water hits hot oil, it causes an explosion that will send droplets of oil all over the place, spreading the fire and causing serious burns.
- Keep a fire extinguisher handy.
Understanding the potential danger of hot oil or grease on a stove; seeing how fast it can spread can be an eye-opening experience. Because we cook every day, we tend to get complacent and careless but the fact is that your stove can be extremely dangerous.
While I’m warning you about the stove… make sure that the handles of all pots and pans on the stove are always turned inward, especially if you have small children.
Even if you don’t have small children, it is so easy to accidently bump the handle if it’s hanging off the edge.
Unsafe Conditions – The Deadly Dozen # 3
3. Fire and explosion hazards
A quick scan in Wikipedia of the worst industrial accidents of the past few years make obvious how serious today’s unsafe condition is; fires and explosions make up a huge percentage of the accidents. Just this past year, sugar dust at Imperial Sugar caused an explosion that was labeled “the deadliest industrial explosion in the United States in decades” (See the 4 posts on this blog concerning this explosion).
More lives are lost through fires and explosions than any other industrial accident. Conditions that are conducive to fires and explosions cannot be tolerated in the workplace.
The Fix
It is obviously beyond the scope of a daily post on a blog to try to solve the issues of fires and explosions in the workplace. A great place to start, however is “The Basics of Fire Safety” which is part of our “Basic Safety” series. Understanding the fire triangle, understanding combustibles, to chemical safety, … all of these are crucial.
For a proper assessment of the potential problems in your workplace, hire a professional, have the fire department do a walk-through, hire an industrial hygienist to do a proper evaluation.
It may cost a bit of money to have all this done but compared to the cost of the lives involved (not to mention the fines which, for Imperial Sugar amounted to $8,777,500) it is nothing.
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