Adding Thanksgiving Fire Security to Your Home

Ahh, the sights, smells, and tastes of Thanksgiving! Many people count this late autumn holiday among their favorite. The festive fall decorations, large family gatherings, and gut-busting dishes truly set this day apart. However, the joys of Thanksgiving season do not come without some security risks. Just as we discussed in our post sharing Halloween Security Tips for Your Home, special days and holidays usually come with their own unique dangers. Unfortunately, Thanksgiving proves no different. However, we have solutions to help you prepare for and even minimize these risks this year. Today, we’ll share some tips to help you with adding Thanksgiving fire security to your home.

First, we’ll explain what makes adding this security difficult to begin with. This will provide a solid “base” for the rest of the information that we share. From there, we’ll shift our focus to effectively anticipating the potential for a fire to help you stay safe if a fire does occur. Then, we’ll review some security equipment that you can install to add invaluable life security to any security system. Finally, we’ll wrap up with a discussion of adding equipment to stop fires in their tracks as soon as possible. Now, let’s dive in with a look at the challenges created when adding Thanksgiving fire security.

What Makes Thanksgiving Fire Security Difficult?

On their website, the NFPA calls Thanksgiving “the peak day for home cooking fires.” This should come as no surprise, given that fact that Thanksgiving is also the peak day for home cooking. The sheer amount of oven use adds a tremendous security risk during this time of the year. Add in the chaos created by extra family and friends in the home, including the potential for more tots and even pets in the house than usual, and this risk grows significantly. All of these factors combine to form a “perfect storm” of kitchen-related danger. We’ll share a couple ways to combat these types of threats throughout this post.

Of course, large gatherings of people eating meals together also create potential fire hazards unrelated to cooking. Perhaps you like to use fall-scented candles as part of a festive centerpiece on your table. Or maybe you have a number of guests whose coats, hats, and gloves end up on a radiator or near a heater in a bedroom while everyone sits around a table in the dining room. Watching out for these types of circumstances can significantly improve your Thanksgiving security when it comes to fire hazards. Now that you know what hazards you are up against, let’s look at how you can prepare for a potential emergency to limit the damage should anything occur.

Anticipating Potential Fire Threats

We’ve always recommended that families create and practice a plan for escaping a fire. After all, none of us do our clearest thinking during situations that make us panic. Therefore, practicing a plan until it turns into a routine greatly increases your chances of surviving a fire. Of course, this rings especially true for families with small children. Even more so than with adults, children require a fully developed and well-practiced fire escape plan. In addition to creating a meeting place, practice escaping to the nearest exits from each area of your home. Finally, practice other important aspects of fire security such as rolling off beds rather than sitting or standing up abruptly, and staying low while escaping. Doing so reduces the chances that family members breathe in toxic fumes that fill rooms from the top down.

Additionally, consider purchasing equipment that makes it more likely that you will escape a fire. Unfortunately, homeowners often get caught in their bedrooms during fires. It’s often too late to try putting a fire out at this point, making escape the best option. Rather than trying to run through a burning home, we recommend having escape devices on hand for this scenario. Rope emergency fire ladders, such as this model by QWORK, quickly connect to window frames to allow escape from upper-story bedrooms. Collapsible escape ladders such as this Kidde model offer this security in an easy-to-store form, deploying quickly after opening. Having an escape device in each upper-story bedroom can provide the safest means of exit possible to all of a home’s residents during a fire. Next, let’s review some security equipment that can aid in adding Thanksgiving fire security.

Install and Maintain the Right Security Equipment

We’ve spent quite a bit of time on this blog touting the effectiveness of monitored fire safety equipment. We can connect all types of fire-related products to your existing home security system. These detectors include smoke, heat, and carbon monoxide detectors. Of course, different devices work best in different circumstances. For example, we install smoke detectors in and around bedrooms and near stairways. However, we do NOT install them in areas where smoke or steam commonly appear. Instead, we put heat detectors near bathrooms and garages to cut down on false alarms. Finally, we install carbon monoxide detection near sleeping areas, as well as in basements near devices that may naturally produce carbon monoxide.

Consider walking through your home with a security company — such as ourselves — who install this equipment professionally. Doing so can ensure you install the proper equipment in the right areas of your home. Furthermore, working with a security company to regularly test and maintain this equipment ensures that it works when you need it most. The monitored response from these devices can save your home if a fire starts in your absence. More importantly, installing these devices can save the life of you or a loved one in the event of a fire or carbon monoxide-related emergency that occurs with someone in the house. Let’s wrap up our discussion on Thanksgiving fire security with a look at adding extinguishers to help you put out fires before they get out of control.

Create the Ability to Stop a Fire in its Tracks

Fire extinguishers provide our customers with a quick, effective way to control the spread of fires. Unfortunately, we run into a couple issues when it comes to extinguishers in homes. For starters, many homeowners fail to purchase any fire extinguishers at all. We consider these devices a basic and essential piece of any security plan. However, many people see them as a “commercial” security measure and fail to provide their family with any fire extinguishers at their home. Obviously, purchasing extinguishers and placing them strategically can help address this issue.

Additionally, we often find that customers buy the wrong types of extinguishers for the job. For example, did you know you should fight any grease or cooking oil-related fire with a very specific type of extinguisher? These extinguishers, called class “K” extinguishers, can douse kitchen fires that no other extinguisher could properly fight. Moreover, using the wrong type of extinguisher can actually make fires spread more quickly! Feel free to check out our post on Fire Extinguisher Classes and Best Practices for more information on this subject. As always, feel free to call us so that we can help you purchase the right extinguishers for your home.

Putting it All Together and Adding Thanksgiving Fire Security