Winter Safety: 9 Tips from a Firefighter to Keep You and Your Home Safe this Winter

The fire district I work for is a suburban district on the west side of Missouri that serves approximately 80,000 residents and visitors, and more than 1,900 businesses. We provide a hazardous materials team, a special rescue team, and provide advanced life support emergency medical services and respond to more than 8,000 calls per year.

Generally, the fire service sees a spike in calls around the holidays. Some of the common and most preventable calls are for carbon monoxide leaks, which most often occur when folks turn their furnaces on for the first time of the winter season. We also see a lot of calls involving space heaters left unattended near something that can burn, which leads to a fire. Heating equipment fires and deaths peak in December, January, and February. As the weather changes to snow and ice, we see a significant increase in non-fire related emergencies as well, such as vehicle accidents and slips and falls.

Being a firefighter is both physically and mentally challenging. When people call us, they are often having one of the worst days of their lives and expect us to make it better to some degree. Sleep gets interrupted, and sometimes we leave in the middle of a meal or without a meal entirely, meaning we often have to make critical decisions under extreme stress.

But we take great pride in the fact that as a team, regardless of the situation—weather, time of day or night, what is going on around us—we can resolve nearly any challenge we are faced with. All that being said, here are nine tips to help you think through ways of how you can keep your family and your home safe this winter. 

Tip #1: Check your carbon monoxide detectors regularly.

My first and foremost recommendation is to have a carbon monoxide detector on every floor of the residence and just outside each sleeping area. Carbon monoxide is considered a “silent killer” because you cannot see it—it’s odorless and colorless. Carbon monoxide leaks most often occur with fuel-burning appliances, primarily gas furnaces, dryers, and water heaters. These tragedies are easily preventable by having your furnace inspected annually, not warming up your car inside your garage, and not only having an adequate number of carbon monoxide detectors but also testing them once a month and replacing the batteries twice a year.

Tip #2: Use space heaters wisely.

Space heaters need to be at a minimum three feet from anything that can burn—curtains, walls, bedding, furniture, etc.—and turned off when you leave the room. I cannot say this enough, but please turn them off when you leave the room. Be mindful of pets and children while using space heaters as well. A pet could easily knock over a heater and cause a fire, or a small child could get too close and get burned. While space heaters are beneficial, I consider them to be some of the most dangerous appliances people can use during the winter.

Tip #3: Test your smoke alarms.

Having working smoke alarms might seem like an obvious safety tip, but it might surprise you to know how many houses don’t have smoke detectors or how many have alarms that don’t work. Again, much like carbon monoxide detectors, the lack of functioning smoke alarms can result in some of the most tragic calls we respond to. The common thought process seems to be “it won’t happen to me/us,” and it might not. But, the folks who have escaped fires because of smoke alarms or who have been awaken in the middle of the night by a carbon monoxide detector will attest that while they probably thought it wouldn’t happen to them, it did—and they were grateful to be prepared.

Here is where your smoke detectors need to be:

• inside each bedroom,
• outside each sleeping area,
• and on every single level of the house including the attic and basement.

It’s also better if the detectors are interconnected or “hardwired” so when one goes off, they all go off. Test them every month, replace batteries every six months, and replace them when they are six to ten years old.

Tip #4: Keep an eye on your Christmas tree.

Tip #9: Expect the unexpected.

Last, but not least, it’s important that you expect the unexpected, particularly when it comes to losing your heat source in your home. If you lose heat, use blankets and towels to seal off drafts from doors and windows. Dress in layers, and do your best to keep your hands and feet warm. As our body gets cold, it naturally begins restricting blood flow to our arms and legs so our vital organs (think head, chest, and abdomen) have enough blood flow to remain warm and functioning. Since our hands and feet are the most distant body parts from our vital organs, they are more likely to be affected by the extreme cold than any other body part—and therefore more susceptible to frost bite.