Red Cross of Georgia gives tips on fire safety do's & dont's

The temperatures are dropping and that means heaters, fireplaces, other heating sources are firing up. But before you get too cozy, well, there's some important fire safety risks to keep in mind, especially as we head into the holiday season. So Jeremy McClendon with the Red Cross of Georgia is joining us now with some tips to help keep your home and your family safe. So Jeremy, good morning to you. Thanks for being on with us. Hey, good morning. Thanks for having me. Hey, all right. So, you know, we cover so many stories. So many families are impacted by fires this time of year. Why is it so common right about now? Well, yeah, I'd like to say, right, in the months of November, December, the Red Cross responds to 20% more home fires in those two months alone, averaging over 40,000 different people that we respond to for home fires. So, you know, when the weather does get a little colder, that's when our alternative sources of heat comes out. Our fireplaces come out. Our space heaters come out. And so those are typically what we see that leads to the Those home fires in these colder months. Yeah. But I'd like to talk about a couple of the things that we would have some tips to give out in these cold months. Yeah, please do. I mean, we're all ears, you know, and even just a moment ago, you mentioned space heaters. That's something I feel like comes up a bit. So I'm sure we'll talk about safety surrounding using those. But what do you have for us, Jeremy? Some things we can keep in mind. Well, the biggest thing is smoke alarms and not just having smoke alarms, but having working smoke alarms. And so we just turned the clocks back on Halloween a few weeks ago. And so that's really when we want to encourage everybody to test those smoke alarms and change the batteries out. So you want to change them out every six months. Even if you have a wired smoke alarm in your house, you want to make sure that those batteries are. Are checked and they are working. Also, you want to do those monthly checks, right? You want to check them every month just to make sure that those smoke alarms are working. With those smoke alarms, you want to make sure that you have them on every level in your house. You want to have one in every bedroom. And you want to make sure that everyone can hear those and they know what to do when those smoke alarms go off in the middle of the night. Okay, so that's a great one for us. Get on top of these smoke alarms, make sure they've got the batteries, make sure that they're working and they're in the right spots. You know, something else that comes to mind when you think about a fire is having a plan ahead of time. I thought this was so interesting about statistics from you guys. You've got about two minutes to make it out. So let's talk about having an escape plan. Yeah, that's right. The two minutes, right? That's that key timeframe that you want to get out of the house when your smoke alarms go out. So what you want to do is you want to have an escape plan for your family to get out of the house. And you want to make sure that everyone has two ways to get out of the house, as well as having two locations that your family is going to meet. And when you're making these plans, you don't want to just make them in a vacuum, right? Like I have two young daughters. Dylan and Parker, and it doesn't do them any good if we have a home fire plan and they don't know what that is. So you want to practice that with your family and make sure that they know how to get out of their house, where to meet, how to call 911, and just to make sure that they know what to do in the case of an emergency. So important to have that plan and to communicate that plan and make sure everyone is on the same page. That's such a great reminder for us, Jeremy. What else do you have for us to help keep us safe this season? Yeah, just, you know, we were talking about space heaters and your fireplaces. You want to make sure that you get your chimneys clean and inspected at least once a year. And if you do, if you are using space heaters, you want to make sure that you do not leave them unattended, especially overnight if they're not in the room that you're sleeping in. You don't want to leave them plugged in and running. And especially if you're going to leave the house, you just want to make sure that they're also not near any curtains or anything flammable that would catch on fire. I know a lot of people bring out candles, too, around the holiday time. You want to make sure that those candles are not near anything that's flammable and they're not left burning when you're away from your house. Very nice. Okay, those are some easy things that we can do today to make sure that we're in tip-top shape and prepared. I want to go back to what you said about the Red Cross Home Fire Campaign. The fact that that saved 2,600 lives is pretty incredible. So let's talk a little bit about that, just how it's making such a difference here in Georgia. Yeah, that's one of the incredible things and a free service that the Red Cross offers to anyone who needs it. So what our volunteers and our staff do is we go around the community, we partner with fire departments, and we find those neighborhoods that really need those smoke alarms, and we install free smoke alarms and provide free fire safety maps, free training and education in your house, and we make sure that your family has. free working smoke alarms in the house, and you can, if you need a smoke alarm, you can call 1-800-RED-CROSS or go to redcross.org to find out more information and put a request in, and our team can come out and install those smoke alarms. Additionally, if that sounds like something that you're interested in, we're always looking for more help and more volunteers, and you can go to redcross.org slash volunteer and find out how and where you can go help your fellow community members to get those free smoke alarms installed. I'm so glad you mentioned that. One more question before we let you go, Jeremy, as we get closer and closer to the holidays. Maybe someone's just joining us for the last minute of our conversation together. What would be, you would say, the most important thing that we should take away from what you said today? I mean, the most important thing are smoke alarms. They literally save lives. Just with our home fire campaign, we saved over 255 lives in the state of Georgia since 2015 when this program came along. Working smoke alarms work. So make sure that you have smoke alarms that are in working condition, the batteries are checked, and that you're testing them once. Once a month and make sure that your family members know what to do when they hear that sound go off in the middle of the night. Some incredibly important reminders for us today. Jeremy McClendon with Red Cross of Georgia. Jeremy, thank you so much. We certainly appreciate it. All right. Thanks for having me. And for more fire safety tips, you can head to redcross.org. We'll share a link at fox5atlanta.com. Just look under the Good Day section.