Fire is the last thing any homeowner ever wants to think about as it can cause so much devastation and emotional pain when it happens. The unfortunate reality is that home fires occur every day and cause devastation to homes and families everywhere.
While most people see fires coming from freak accidents that could never happen to them, most house fires come from very common objects. Let’s look at what the most common causes of house fires are.
Why House Fires are So Common
With so many house fires occurring across the nation every day, it would seem that something is causing fires to happen rather easily. The reason that house fires are so common is honestly that people don’t take them seriously enough considering how easily they can happen.
People have this idea that house fires are some foreign concept that would never happen to them, but that just isn’t the case. To prevent fires, we need to understand what causes them most often.
Common Causes of Fires
Cooking Equipment
With the kitchen being an environment where heat and flames are the norm, it is no surprise that this is most often the place fires occur. People cooking with high heat, leaving equipment unattended, and burning food can all contribute to a fire starting within the kitchen.
When fire restoration teams look through the aftermath of fires, they can easily point out one or two small issues that got out of control and caused the fire to happen. Not watching food cook and thinking it will be ok is one of the fastest ways you can watch your kitchen erupt in flames.
Home Heating
Despite its integration in nearly every home, heating units of all shapes and sizes can cause fires with relative ease. While these units themselves are not going to just cause a fire, user error or negligence are what cause heating systems to become very dangerous and start fires.
Home heating systems with radiator systems are rather safe, but they can cause a fire if you leave them in contact with flammable objects that can heat up and ignite. With portable heaters, they can be even more dangerous as them falling over on a carpet or getting too hot can quickly turn into a recipe for disaster.
Candles
Everyone loves a nice candle to fil the room with a feeling of warmth, but they are something that should not be neglected. With their small flame and stable platforms for providing scents or warmth, many people never think that a candle could cause a serious fire.
Unfortunately, all it takes is a bump onto the floor for a small candle to start a substantial fire. All you need to do when enjoying a candle is to make sure you are keeping an eye on it and that you never light a candle and leave it unattended.
Christmas Trees
The holidays are a time that is supposed to be filled with warmth, but a fire is not the kind of warmth most people picture. In nearly every state, fire rates are at their highest during the holidays when Christmas trees are lit and people leave them on all day.
Christmas trees are very safe when you can keep an eye on them, but they can easily become a hazard when left unattended. Anything from the dog knocking over the tree to a bulb getting hot and burning the tree, the family tree quickly becomes a serious threat.
Smoking
While we are not here to debate whether or not you should be smoking, the fact is that they use fire and have the potential to cause damage to your home. From putting out used buds on the floor to the damage that smoking indoors can have, there are a number of ways smoking can cause a fire.
If you want to smoke in the home, you need to be extra careful with how you dispose of the remnants in a way that it has no chance of sparking a flame. With smoke, you can prevent this home damage by simply smoking outside the home.
Preventing House Fires
Be Alert
If more people were to stay alert when there is something that could cause fire in the home, fire issues would drop dramatically. Being alert doesn’t mean watching every candle burn at all times, but it means using common sense to not leave a source of heat or flames unattended.
Even if you notice something catching fire in the kitchen, you can easily prevent it from spreading by acknowledging the issue and dealing with it. Whether it’s simply turning off the oven or putting out a small fire, being alert can save your home.
Know Common Causes
Assuming you have read the points that we looked at above, you are already ahead of the curve compared to most of the possibilities. Knowing what causes fire to happen in the home allows you to recognize potential issues and prevent them from even becoming issues.
You now know how dangerous the Christmas tree can be and the risk of fire associated with the kitchen, so use this new knowledge to save your home. Knowledge of what can cause a fire prevents you from acting in ways that cause those fires from happening in the first place.
Have the Right Contacts
In the event of a fire, there is often very little you can do to deal with it. Unless you were there when it happened, the fire is past the point of your control and needs to be dealt with. Once you called 911 and had the fire come out, your work is not done.
With the fire put out, you need to call a Richmond restoration team to help you recover. The right team of restoration specialists can help you can your home recover from fire damage in powerful ways. When you can’t stop a fire, how you act after it is all you can control.
Need someone to call when fire strikes in the Richmond area?
Call VRS to always have someone by your side if a fire occurs.
