With an uptick in home fires, use winter break to review fire safety
FARGO (KVRR-KFGO) – The American Red Cross Minnesota-Dakotas Region says its seeing an uptick in home fires during the winter months due to the colder weather, space heaters, electrical issues, and holiday decorations.
“I think we’ve seen over 20% increase as a region just in the last couple weeks of home fires,” said Kimberly Vosseteig, Executive Director of the Red Cross in Eastern North Dakota and Northwestern Minnesota. “Getting these alerts on my phone that these fires are happening almost on an hourly basis throughout our tri-state community, something you don’t want to see. So I think it’s ramping up definitely.”
Vosseteig says the non-profit counts on local volunteers to help people who’ve gone through tragic situations.
“They are doing the hard work, they’re having these hard conversations with someone who may have just lost a family member from a fire, or they lost a pet or they lost everything,” Vosseteig explains. “It’s a gigantic mountain for these individuals to even look at to start climbing on how do I rebuild, what did I lose and what do I need? And it’s really our volunteers who are the ones who are walking through that with them.”
The Red Cross says Christmas break is the perfect time to have important conversations with your kids and other family members about home fire safety and practice emergency escape plans.
“What happens when the smoke alarm goes off, where are you going, why do you need to get out. It’s those smaller things that a lot of families don’t have those conversations and they’re so truly important,” Vosseteig says. “It’s making sure your kiddo knows that the smoke alarm beeps, you don’t go hide in the closet or hide because it’s loud, you get out of the house. And it’s something that we need to talk more about.”
The Red Cross urges everyone to make sure their smoke alarms are working. If you need smoke alarms, a Red Cross volunteer will come to your home and install them for free.
