Holiday Fire Precautions

by Samantha Gleissner

As we approach the holiday season many people forget the dangers of fires; it’s rainy and cold and the chances of wildfires are heavily reduced. However, it is important to remember that you should never let your fire safety habits take a holiday, as there is a significantly increased risk of residential fires occurring whenever people start spending more time in the kitchen. Residential fires are not just a risk to the individuals responsible, but to neighbors and nearby buildings as well. If a fire starts in your oven or fryer, not only can it ruin your holiday, but it may also wind up costing you a lot of money, and I know nobody wants to have to dip into Christmas savings for Thanksgiving Day fire repairs!

You might be wondering, what are the main causes of Thanksgiving Day fires. Well, not surprisingly, according to National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS) it is estimated that 69% of residential fires on Thanksgiving are cooking fires, which is a jump from the average 42% caused by cooking during the rest of the year. The other leader in Thanksgiving Day fires may not be as obvious, but 10% of Thanksgiving Day fires are caused by heating sources such as hearth fires and space heaters, so be careful to remind your guests to watch where they set flammable objects such as coats and shoes.

It is also important to realize what objects in your home may act as fuel sources; increasing your risks of a residential fire. Some of the items that have been noted as ignition points for residential fires are roofing and exterior trim, rugs and other flooring, wall and ceiling covers, and other highly combustible items within or exterior to the household depending on where you will be doing your cooking and heating. If you are going to have an outdoor Thanksgiving with a fryer or bonfire it is necessary to make sure you take the precautions of moving cooking equipment to a safe distance from any combustible items such as patio furniture, house siding, or vegetation that could catch fire. Whether you are indoors or out for your holiday it is also important never to leave cooking food, open flames, or heating elements unattended.

Another idea for a safe holiday would be to take some time prior to beginning your preparations to test all of your household smoke alarms and warning systems. If your smoke detectors batteries are low or dead, be sure to replace them before you start all your cooking. Smoke detectors can be a vital early warning should any cooking go awry and can help you and your family stay safe in the event of a holiday fire mishap. Something else that not everybody might consider is to be sure you have a method of extinguishing a fire should one occur. Many households have a fire extinguisher, but as a result of infrequent use, many people may not know where their extinguisher has been stashed or worse if it even still works. Be sure to check your extinguisher and follow the directions carefully. For your own peace of mind, take some time to familiarize yourself with the use instructions before you start your holiday preparations.

Many of these tips and safety ideas are little more than common sense, but so often when a fire mishap occurs it can be too late to consider what you have not done to get prepared. Since we all know that every second counts in a fire emergency, don’t put off taking some extra safety precautions this holiday season!

For more fire-safety tips, fire statistics, and safety ideas check out these links:

http://kbhr933.com/current-news/firewise-thanksgiving-day/

http://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/statistics/v11i5.pdf

Natural Disasters

By Samantha Gleissner

I’d like to take a little step outside the fire zone and bring up something that may be relevant not only to how we perceive wildfires but global climactic events and natural disasters in general. In this growing age of human impact awareness we are beginning to understand more and more about how we humans are impacting our environment. As a student of environmental sciences, it has been a prominent point in my education to learn to see how our actions influence changes in the natural environment, and now I’d like to share with you a few things that I have come to understand about human impacts.

It is important when evaluating wildlife populations to understand how they fit into their environment and how they can impact other species in their community, but there are few if any creatures that influence their environment as much as humans do. As one of very few exponentially increasing species, humans tend to adjust the environment to fit their needs as opposed to dwelling only in environments that already fit their needs like most other species on the planet do. We tend to alter landscapes and species compositions by removing plants or animals that we find to be “out of place”. For some purposes this is a helpful practice (i.e. invasive species removal to promote native species health), but humans are also uniquely capable of removing thousands of hectares of natural habitats in a mater of a few weeks or months. We alter landscapes from forested to clear-cut, or from desert to tropical in some cases (California). Such drastic landscape alterations change the way the ecosystem functions in those areas and can bring on more frequent natural disasters and even worsen their effects.

Pollutants increase the toxicity of the air we breathe and influence the measurements the earth “takes” to reduce damage to its ecosystems and balance. I want people to think about the earth sort of like the human body, earth tends to keep a homeorhetic state, meaning that the earth maintains a stable flow similar to the human body. When something is altered in an unnatural way the earth will respond to correct the change, much like a human body. Global climate change is the earths “immune system” kicking into gear to remove the damaging or threatening alterations. Rains increase when high amounts of pollutants are released into the air, this helps trap the pollutants and remove them from the atmosphere. Similarly any climactic event or natural disaster can be better understood by evaluating the earth’s health. Often disasters occur in highly populated regions, often due to landscape alterations that change how the air, water, and other components flow thru the topography. Alterations such as the changes made to sagebrush habitat here in Idaho, for agriculture and industry, can lead to soil erosion, stronger wind effects, changes to soil nutrients, and other issues that can intensify future disaster effects.

When you begin to consider the impacts we have on the earth and the increasing human population, it is not really all that surprising to hear that natural disasters and climatic changes have increased over the years as well. Increased alteration of the land to accommodate our infinitely growing populations of humans and industry make it clear that our impacts do effect the way the earth functions. If an area is clear-cut to make way for industry or human habitation, we are changing the natural flow of the land and the way climactic patterns influence it and natural disaster affect it.

While many people understand that the earth is a functioning organism, very few people in contrast understand how our impacts on the earth no matter how minute affect the balance and even bring on “natural events” sooner or more strongly than they would normally occur.

Since I’m explaining this in a way that humanizes the earth, I would like to point out that humans as a species are far closer to being an invasive species, or even virus like in our interactions with this planet, but that doesn’t mean that we are not nor can be a natural part of the world. On occasion in the human body a functional cell such as an immune cell becomes “confused” and attacks the body, but this does not mean that it is a foreign cell to the body. I believe that humans are much like a confused immune cell; we are here to be a part of the world, to function in a capacity that facilitates the stable flow of the world’s climate and ecology. We just need to learn how to function more appropriately with the rest of the system of which we are a part so we can help restore and maintain our planet for future generations.