10 Holiday Safety Tips

Bridgewater Retirement Community wants everyone to have a safe and wonderful holiday season, so we are sharing these holiday safety tips with you.

Please don’t let decorations start a fire. A little precaution and time to check decorations before you use them will prevent many accidents.

1. Inspect decorations for damaged sockets, loose or bare wires, and connections before use.
2. Avoid overloaded electrical outlets. Plug only one high-wattage into each outlet at a time.
3. Never connect more than three strings of incandescent lights. Blown fuses can also cause a fire.
4. Keep trees fresh by watering daily. Dry trees are a serious fire hazard.
5. Use battery-operated candles. Unattended candles are the cause of 1 in 5 home candle fires.
6. Keep combustibles at least three feet from heat sources.
7. Protect cords from damage. Electrical cords should never be pinched by furniture, forced into small spaces such as doors and windows, placed under rugs, located near heat sources, or attached by nails or staples. Also be aware of tripping hazards with cords.
8. Check decorations for certification labels. Decorations not bearing a label from an independent testing laboratory such as underwriters laboratory (ul), Canadian standards association (CSA), or Intertek (ETL), have not been tested for safety and could be hazardous.
9. Stay in the kitchen when cooking something. Unattended cooking equipment is the leading cause of home cooking fires.
10. Turn off, unplug, and extinguish all decorations when going to sleep or leaving the house. Half of home fire deaths occur between the hours of 11:00 pm and 7:00 am.

Have a healthy, happy holiday season. Blessings from the BRC safety committee.