Every year, more than 4.5 million children ages 14 and under are treated in emergency rooms for injuries that occur in the home. Drowning is the second leading cause of death for children 1-14 years old. Fire and burn related injuries are the third leading cause of injury related to death in children 1-14 years old. Children are also at the highest risk for unintentional poisonings.

Fire Safety

1. Keep matches and lighters locked up and out of reach of children.
2. Have a home escape plan with at least two exits in case of emergencies; and pratice once a month.
3. Have at least a two and half pound extinguisher installed in plain view in your house and know how to use it.
4. Have working smoke alarms on each level of your home and in each bedroom. Remember to change the batteries in the smoke alarms when you change your clocks.

Water Safety

1. NEVER leave children unattended in the bathtub, pool, or around ANY water source for ANY reason.
2. Be sure someone in your home knows CPR and basic first aid.
    

Poisonous Materials

1. Keep medicines in their original containers and out of sight and reach of children.
2. Keep hazardous products such as household cleaners, bug sprays, fertilizers locked up and out of children’s reach.
3. Flammable products such as gasoline, paint and varnish must be kept in their original containers, away from heat sources, in an approved storage cabinet and out of reach of children.

When an emergency vehicle has its lights and siren on, it is responding to an emergency. It is the law and YOUR responsibilty to:

• Pull to the right side of the road and STOP until the emergency vehicle has passed.
• Give all emergency vehicles the right-of-way.
• Keep back at least 500 feet from an emergency vehicle when it is responding with lights and sirens.
• Do not drive over fire hoses.
• Drive carefully around an emergency scene.

Carbon monoxide (CO) is an odorless, colorless, deadly gas. It can kill you before you know it because you can’t see it, taste it or smell it. At lower levels of exposure, it can cause health problems. Some people may be more vulnerable to CO poisoning such as fetuses, infants, children, senior citizens and those with heart or lung problems. When CO is breathed in by an individual, it accumulates in the blood and forms a toxic compound known as carboxyhemoglobin (COhb). Hemoglobin carries oxygen in the bloodstream to cells and tissues. Carbon monoxide attaches itself to hemoglobin and displaces the oxygen that the body organs need.

Carboxyhemoglobin can cause headaches, fatigue, nausea, dizzy spells, confusion and irritability. Later stages of CO poisoning can cause vomiting loss of consciouness and eventually brain damage or death.

Carbon monoxide is a by-product of combustion of fossil fuels. Fumes from automobiles contain high levels of CO. Appliances such as furnaces, space heaters, clothes dryers, ranges, ovens water heaters, charcoal grills, fireplaces and wood burning stoves produce CO. Carbon monoxide usually is vented to the outside if appliances function correctly and the home is vented properly. Problems occur when furnace heat exchanger crack or vents and chimneys become blocked. Insulation sometimes can trap CO in the home.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission recommends installing at least one carbon monoxide detector with an audible alarm near the bedrooms. if a home has more than one story, a detector should be place on each story.

Be sure the detector has a testing laboratory label.

The following is a checklist for where to look for problem sources of CO in the home:

1. A forced air furnace is frequently the source of leaks and should be carefully inspected.
2. Check furnace connections to flue pipes and venting systems to the outside of the home for signs of corrosion, rust gaps, holes.
3. Check furnace filters and filtering systems for dirt and blockage.
4. Check forced air fans for proper installation and to assure correct air flow of flue gases.
5. Check the combustion chamber and internal heat exchanger for cracks, holes, metal fatigue or corrosion. Be sure they are clean and free of debris.
6. Check burners and ignition system. A flame that is mostly yellow in color in natural gas fired furnaces is often a sign that the fuel is not burning completely and higher levels of carbon monoxide are being released.
7. Check all venting systems to the outside including flues and chimneys for cracks, corrosion, holes, debris, blockages. Animals and birds can build nest in chimneys preventing gases from escaping.
8. Check all other appliances in the home that use flammable fuels such as natural gas, oil, propane, wood or kerosene. Appliances include water heaters, clothes dryers, kitchen ranges, ovens or cooktops: woodburning stoves, gas refigerators.
9. Pilot lights can be a source of carbon monoxide because the by-products of combustion are released inside the home rather than vented outside.
10. Be sure space heaters are vented properly. Unvented space heaters that use a flammable fuel such as kerosene can release carbon monoxide into the home.
11. Barbeque grills should never be operated indoors under any circumstances nor should stove tops or ovens that operate onflammable fuels be used to heat a residence.
12. Check for closed, blocked or bent flues, soot and debris.
13. Check the clothes dryer vent opening outside the house for lint.

    

Each year more than 15,000 people are seriously burned when their clothes catch on fire. In more than half of the incidents, flammable liquids or vapors were present on or around the person’s clothing. But it can happen in many ways. A person’s loose sleeve may catch on fire on a hot stove. Someone may be working with gasoline or some other flammable liquid and then light a cigarette. They might spray lighter fluid on a smoldering barbeque fire and the resulting flames could catch their clothes on fire. When a person’s clothing catches on fire, action must instinctive and immediate. There is not time to think. The one thing you should never do is run.

To minimize a burn injury when your clothes catch fire, STOP, DROP and ROLL. Burns are among the most painful of injuries and the third leading cause of unintentional death in the United States. The hands, groin, face and lungs are at particular risk because the are delicates structures and easily injured. The healing process is slow and painful, resulting in enormous personal suffering.

Basic Burn Care/First Aid Burn Treatment

The important thing to remember when dealing with burn injuries is that you should never underestimate the seriousness of a burn. You should seek medical help if any doubt exist with regard to the seriousness of a burn.

        First Aid Burn Treatment

1. Cool the burn immediately with cool water to reduce the skin temperature and stop the burning process, numb the pain and prevent or reduce swelling. Do not use ice on burns as it may decrease the blood supply to the area and may actually make the burn worse.
2. Remove burned clothing, metal from belt buckles, etc as these things can continue to burn if they retain heat. Disposable diapers will especially retain heat. Loosen or remove tight clothing, jewelry, or boots before swelling occurs. If burn is over 30% of the total body surface area you may have swelling in an area remote from the burn due to fluid shifts, so remove everything that might constrict.
3. After cooling the burn with water, cover the burn with a clean dressing to the burn area. If you don’t have a dressing, cover the burn with a clean t-shirt (never a towel as the fiber can stick in the wound and be painful to remove). People are usually more comfortable if exposed nerve endings are covered, and also it is important to keep the burn victim warm.
4. For serious burns don’t give anything to the victim to eat or drink prior to seeking medical attention. 
5. Elevate burns to the extremities to reduce swelling. 

   GET MEDICAL HELP! Never underestimate the seriousness of a burn!

For a person who is burnt around the head there is a danger of an airway injury, as such they must be brought to the hospital immediately if there are singed nasal hairs, burned face, or burns around the mouth. In this case always keep the head elevated.

The harsh vibrating sound heard during respiration in cases of obstruction of the air passages, also known as “stridor” is a potenially fatal sign related with burn victims.

Certain types of clothing are less flammable and resist flames more than other types of clothing. Heavier clothing and fabrics with a tight knit weave burn more slowly compared to loose knit clothing. Fabrics with a loose fit or fluffy pile will ignite more readily than tight-fitting, dense fabric clothing. Synthetic fibers, such as nylon, once ignited, melt and burn causing severe burns. Natural fibers, such as cotton and wool, tend to burn more slowly than sythnetic fibers. However, fibers that combine both synthetic and natural fibesr may be of greater hazard than either fabric alone. Curtains and draperies can be sprayed with flame retardants to reduce their rate of burning. Howerver, these chemicals should not be applied to clothing.

The principles of STOP, DROP and ROLL are simple:

STOP, do not run, if your clothes catch on fire.
DROP to the floor in a prone (face down) position.
Cover your face with your hands to protect it from the flames.
ROLL over and over to smother the fire. Don’t stop until the flames have been extinguished.
If you are near someone whose clothing catches on fire, be sure to stop them from running and make them STOP, DROP and ROLL.

Sparky courtesy of NFPA.

The following rules should be followed to insure ice safety:

1. Never assume the ice is safe.
2. The only safe ice is at a rink.
3. Never skate on an untested lake or pond.
4. The ice should have a minimum of at least (6) inches.
5. Never skate alone.
6. Only skate during the day or if an area is illuminated.
7. Know the body of water, nearby street, and where the nearest location is to go for help.
8. Never use ice for a shortcut.
9. Never go out onto the ice after an animal or toy.

      ICE STRENGTH

With respect to the ice strength, a point of great importance to skaters and others is that you cannot tell the strength of the ice simply by its looks and thickness, the daily temperature, or whether or not the ice is covered with snow. The strength of ice is determined by several factors:

1. Chemistry of the water (salt or fresh)
2. Local climatic factors such as wind, snow, rain, and temperature fluctuations which can vary considerably from day to day.
3. The presence of currents such as at stream inflows/outflows, and along streams or rivers.
4. The presence of springs and the size and depth of the lake or pond.
5. The distribution of the weight or load placed on the ice.
6. The signs of expansion cracks.

For immediate response- call 911

What to do when someone has fallen through the ice:

1. Do not attempt to rescue the victim. If the ice could not support their weight, it will not support your weight.
2. Try to calm and reassure the victim and have them stay afloat.
3. Go to nearby location and call 911 for help. Also wait for emergency responders to bring them to the exact location of the victim.
4. If with a responsible adult, have the adult return to try and assist the victim from shore.
5. First, is to provide victim with something to help them stay afloat such as plastic milk/soda bottles, or a spare tire.
6. If the victim is stable and afloat try to send something to reach and retrieve victim such as a rope, extension cord, ladder, branch, boat or tying clothes together.
7. If victim is retrieved to shore, take steps to keep victim warm (change clothes, wrap in blanket) until rescue personnel arrive.

It takes at least 5 to 7 days of temperature in the low 20’s before ice may become safe.

December 15, 2007 (Group 3)-  No one was injured, but a shed was destroyed during a fire on Saturday. The Wolfeboro Fire-Rescue Department was alerted to the blaze in a shed at the Paul Swanick residence at 21 Waumbeck Road. First arriving units found heavy fire showing from the 10×12 foot shed, which was a safe distance from the home. The fire was declared under control at 4:56 p.m. The shed and its contents were a total loss. The cause of the fire remains under investigation by the Wolfeboro Fire-Rescue Department and is accidental in nature. Fire-Rescue Deputy Chief Tom Zotti says the fire appears to have started in the area of a battery charger, which was in use at the time of the blaze. Wolfeboro Fire-Rescue was assisted at the scene by Lakeside Ambulance.
Story also in the Granite State News.