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This year Child Safety Week runs from 21st to 27th June with the theme “Make time for Safety”.
Children are by nature naive and inquisitive and as such can find trouble where adults can see no danger.
The number of fire incidents involving children is staggering and parents should heed the warnings that failure to educate children about the dangers of fire and playing with fire could and does have tragic consequences.
How many households actively discuss fire safety with their children, explain what to do in the event of fire, tell them the safest escape route, or how to dial 999. On modern double glazed windows the key locks are often removed and stored elsewhere. Do the kids know how to open them?
Child safety week should be a reminder to all parents to take time out to consider the worst case scenario’s and impress on their kids the real dangers of playing with matches, lighters, cleaning liquids and medicines. When you take time to think about it safety is just common sense.
Are adequate fire alarms fitted, most commonly smoke detectors and are they tested regularly?
Are medicines stored in secure cupboards or better still purpose made cabinets well out of reach of children.
Candles and tea lights are a particularly risk and cause significant numbers of fires in bedrooms.
Matches and Lighters should obviously not be left lying around for the kids to find.
Never leave the kids unsupervised in the kitchen when cooking is in progress and have a fire blanket on hand to smother flames quickly.
Don’t leave clothes and toys on the stairs or in doorways -they are an accident just waiting to happen.
Sitting down for a half hour or so with the family to discuss and explain the dangers, make a fire action plan and set some house safety rules will give parents some peace of mind and raise awareness of safety issues that will hopefully stick in the minds of the children.
As part of National Child safety week a great deal of work is being done by the emergency services and fire brigades in schools and awareness events up and down the country. Parents should do their bit and help reduce avoidable child injuries and fatalities.
Tony
Well here it is. Merry Christmas as the Slade classic goes. This ubiquitous but really cheery song seems to be playing interminably on loop at the local radio station that provides background encouragement to our guys in the warehouse.
At this time of year we anticipate a slowdown in demand as businesses and schools take a break and homeowners turn their attention to the preparations for Christmas and New Year. Contrary to what we might expect the warehouse is still buzzing thanks, in the main part, to the winter chill, as customers scramble for our winter maintenance safety products, snow scoops, ice melts and the like.
But Christmas has more deadly potential than the snow and ice and I offer a timely reminder to take extra care at Christmas as sad to say, statistically it is the peak time for residential fires.
Don’t put wet clothes to dry either on or in front of space heaters or open fires as at best you might ruin the best winter coat and at worse you might start a damaging fire that wrecks more than just your family Christmas.
Don’t leave lit candles unattended and always extinguish before retiring to bed, the latter task requiring at least one person to remain vaguely compos mentis amongst the drunken revelry.
Turn off Christmas lights at the socket when retiring or leaving home to visit friends, family or the local hostelry.
A real fire of yuletide logs looks fantastic but use a fireguard and let the fire burn well down before hitting the sack.
Test your smoke alarm and if you don’t have one make it a late addition to your letter to Santa.
Oh and one last thing - if like me you set fire to the Christmas pud using a generous slug of brandy as the accelerant – do it at the table in front of the family. It is more fun for the kids and more importantly a good deal safer that walking from kitchen to diner carrying a flaming hot dish!! (I find if you warm the brandy first over a low flame or candle it is easier to light).
Have a very happy and very safe Christmas and New Year and may all your wishes come true.
Tony
My 25 mile commute to work each day is increasingly hazardous with black ice creating treacherous driving on the untreated roads. I nearly went a-o-t on my own door step as the damp in the air crystallised to an invisible ice film on the step paving.
I am certainly not alone, and as the buoyant sales of winter snow and ice safety products demonstrate now is the time to get out the de-icer. There are some misconceptions on what de-icer to use and how effective the various options are particularly when it comes to roads and paths.
Here’s a quick rundown on the options.
Grit or more rightly grit sand has little or no ice melting capability. It improves grip for vehicles if spread in reasonable quantity but expect it to become frozen into the ice at the next freeze. It is usually sold in bags or in bulk and is difficult to dispense using a pedestrian spreader as the high moisture content makes it prone to clog. It also creates a sludgy residue that can be trodden into carpets.
Road Salt or Rock Salt has a gritty appearance but is not grit but a crushed natural, salt rich, sedimentary “rock”. It works by lowering the freezing temperature of moisture on the road and has to be crushed by the traffic and dissolve to be effective. It becomes less effective much below -5⁰C and virtually ineffective once the temperature gets below -10⁰C. Being a natural product it contains a good percentage of insoluble solids and it is these that combine with the melted ice to form the characteristic brown sludge that is trodden into carpets and cars. It does not suit all pedestrian spreaders so be sure to read the specification before you buy one.
Processed salts, often sold as white de-icing salt, is of much higher purity – some better than 99% salt. Grain size is also uniform which makes them free flowing and easily broadcast using a salt spreader or even a scoop for smaller areas. The high purity means pound for pound (kg for kg) they are far more effective than Rock Salt so spread a good deal further. I think the biggest advantage is that they are clean to apply, leaving little of no residue on the ground.
Proprietary Ice Melts, like our Promelt Winter Wizard are specially formulated combinations of different salts to give fast acting results over a wider range of temperature. Although the most expensive choice the small free flowing granules go further and their effects last longer – up to 24 hours. Although most commonly supplied in sealed tubs and small bags a recent innovation is the Salt Stick which is a pre-packed tube holding 1.5 kg of ice melt with an adjustable dispenser at one end. You use it like a “shake and vac” without the “vac”, (I appreciate some guys will wonder what I am talking about). Benefit is that they are clean, are easily stored indoors and are hassle free.
And one last tip – avoid using table salt – it will work for a little while but it is probably costing you around £1 /m2 whereas a 5kg tub of Winter Wizard will deice 450m2 for under 3 pence /m2 and last a whole lot longer into the bargain.
Tony
It’s that time of year again as thousands, nay tens of thousands of fresh faced students leave home, many for the first time in their lives, to attend University. Mum has packed them off with everything but the kitchen sink to squash into the changing cubicles that pass as student accommodation in most Halls of Residence.
The shock to the system for the erstwhile fresher is the realization that for the next 4 or 5 years they have to largely fend for themselves rather than relying on the miracle that is mother to do the dirty work. Small details like getting to grips with the woolens cycle, relying on their own common sense to stay out of trouble and feeding themselves on the pittance left over once the bar bill has been paid will all take their toll.
Not all take to this with the aplomb expected of an otherwise intelligent university entrant as the students in the University of Portsmouth’s James Watson halls of residence found out last week when more than 100 students were evacuated after a fire broke out on the first floor.
Someone had apparently forgotten they had left a pan cooking merrily on the hob. Cooking oils and fats like any other oils have an auto-ignition temperature above which they ignite spontaneously. For the benefit of non science students out there, unlike more traditional flammable liquids such as petrol and solvents, the auto-ignition temperature for cooking oils can vary immensely. Auto-ignition can occur anywhere from 285°C to 385°C. For auto-ignition to occur, the entire mass of oil must have been heated to beyond the auto-ignition temperature. However, once ablaze the oil changes composition slightly resulting in a new auto-ignition temperature, which may be as much as 30°C lower. The result is the fire becomes self-sustaining until the entire mass of oil is cooled to below this new lower auto-ignition temperature.
The pan in question duly overheated, the oil ignited and caused a fire which quickly spread to the cooker hood and ceiling. One male student tried to do the right thing and threw a fire blanket over the pan. This is absolutely OK if the fire is confined to the pan. He may possibly have had better results with a wet chemical fire extinguisher which is designed specifically for this type of fire and includes a long lance so you can apply it from a distance.
However if the fire has spread to other combustibles the best course of action is to raise the alarm, get out fast and call the emergency services. The brave chap, who also had asthma, found this out the hard way and was overcome with the fumes but thankfully with the prompt intervention of Southsea Fire Services he and his cohorts survived unharmed.
It is a statistical fact that most chip pan fires are caused in the evening and quite late at night when a quick fry up after a few pints of the amber nectar seems de rigueur. Ironically for students starved of mum’s home cooking, like its pal the tin opener the chip pan is seen as a virtual lifesaver. The first lesson they should be taught is that it can also be a life taker.
Tony
The great British chip has a lot to answer for. Statistics show that on average 35 fires a week result from cooking chips prompting our Government to issue a warning that late-night fry-ups cause many of the 46 deaths a year from chip-pan fires.
More than 4,600 people were injured when they tried to make chips last year, with more than 30% of the injuries happening between 10pm and 4am.This is not unrelated to the unsurprising fact that men are twice as likely to be hurt as women when making chips.
So the scenario is the man of the house arriving home late and hungry after a few glasses of the amber nectar and putting on the chip pan for a late supper. Nodding off in front of the Telly, overfilling the pan with oil or throwing in handfuls of soaking wet chips or any combination thereof and you have a disaster in the making.
The advice as always from the Fire service is don’t panic - get you and yours out of the building and call the Brigade. Seems logical and is logical - but standing by whilst your hand crafted limed oak kitchen is consumed to ashes is not a natural human reaction.
What can you do? Well obviously the above - I would not wish to denigrate the professionals advice - but you can take some positive action and possibly limit the damage if you are prepared. Have a fire blanket in the house - easily accessible and close to the hob. Throwing this over the fire before it gets too big will smother it. Turn off the heat source and leave it for at least 20 minutes to allow the oil to cool below flash point.
You could also invest in a wet chemical extinguisher or the new ABF foam extinguisher both of which are designed specifically for fires in chip pans and deep fat fryers and are small enough to mount discreetly behind a cupboard door. They are designated by BSI as Class F extinguishers for the technically minded.
What you can’t do is throw water over the burning pan – it will explode. A wet tea towel used to be de rigueur but no longer - tests show that if it is too wet it will cause an eruption that will blow it clean off and if too dry it will burn just as well as the kitchen cabinets, so grannies be warned this is no longer the accepted wisdom.
Don’t use any other type of fire extinguisher but a Class F on the fire – they simply don’t work and water will make it 10 times worse - immediately!!
And finally if you have had a skin full and its 4am in the morning - rustle up a cheese and pickle sandwich if you are peckish. The worst that can happen is that you cut your hand off.
Tony
