5 Tips to Prevent House Fires
Is your home truly protected? Fire is a serious threat that can arise at any time due to carelessness; Therefore, it’s important that we keep in mind these 5 tips to prevent house fires.
You may not realize the potential dangers lurking in your home. Many times, a minor imprudence generates serious damage to houses, furnishings, and other belongings, and can even put lives at risk. For this reason, it’s important to value the idea of protecting yourself and your family, using prevention as the main weapon to avoid household accidents.
Tips to prevent house fires
1. Don’t leave appliances plugged in
Generally, people leave numerous devices connected to the electric current of their homes. This is a serious danger, as any overload can cause a short circuit that can start a fire. In fact, we tend to leave home thinking that nothing will happen.
The supervision of the devices that are plugged into the light is more than necessary. This is the only way to avoid serious accidents. In the event of short circuits, if we’re close to the device, we have the capacity to act before the situation gets worse. But if we’re far from the device or have left home, the situation can quickly get out of hand.
For this reason, it’s important to never leave anything plugged in when we leave home or take a shower. Computers, mobile phones, and certain household appliances can cause a saturation of the electrical system and start a fire.
To avoid short circuits, it’s better not to leave devices plugged in for too many hours.
2. Use smoke detectors
Fire systems are truly useful to prevent accidents. Today, there are many companies dedicated to the installation of smoke detectors, but how can they help you?
- They’re intelligent devices that detect smoke and produce a sound that alerts you to possible danger.
- At the same time, this detector emits a signal to other devices that instantly spray water to put out the flames. Therefore, a connection of devices is produced that allows the total protection of the house.
- If you spend a lot of time away from home and can’t maintain daily control over your home, these provide us with the security that we so desire.
3. A fire extinguisher always at hand
Public buildings are governed by regulations that require them to have fire extinguishers in different rooms. In the same way, you can have a couple of fire extinguishers at home to prevent house fires.
They must be located in those spaces where you spend most of your time and where there’s a greater risk of fire: The living room and the kitchen. In addition, it’s in these two places where electricity is used the most and where a fire can more easily be generated.
They don’t need to be in sight, as this would interfere with the aesthetics of the house quite a bit. In fact, they can be located inside a closet, hidden in a corner, or hidden next to a piece of furniture. Just make sure everyone knows where they’re kept and how to use them, and your home will be safer.
4. Turn off power strips and prevent house fires
Normally, we use power strips to connect different electronic devices. This can mean an overload of electricity that can generate a short circuit.
In recent years, there have been a large number of fires caused by power strips. Therefore, it’s important to turn them off whenever they’re not going to be used. In the same way, it would be best not to use all the plugs continuously.
Most home fires are caused by electrical systems.
5. Protect heaters well
Current heating systems have helped us prevent house fires; However, there are still old houses with fireplaces, wood-burning stoves, space heaters, or outdated heating systems.
Tables with tablecloths can catch fire simply by moving them close to the heat source; the expansion of the fire through the room would then occur rapidly.
All cited sources were thoroughly reviewed by our team to ensure their quality, reliability, currency, and validity. The bibliography of this article was considered reliable and of academic or scientific accuracy.
- AA. VV.: Vivir seguro: consejos para convertir tu casa en un hogar seguro, Barcelona, CEAC, 2007.
- Asociación Profesional de Técnicos de Bomberos (APTB). ESTUDIO DE VÍCTIMAS DE INCENDIOS EN ESPAÑA EN 2017. https://www.aptb.org/images/Estudio_Victimas_de_incendios_en_Espana_en_2017-ilovepdf-compressed_1-ilovepdf-compressed.pdf