Safety paramount to not creating unwanted fire
The Tahoe Fire & Fuels team is offering a variety of fire recommendations.
Embers, often concealed in what appears to be cold ashes, can remain hot enough to kindle a fire for several days.
To safely dispose of ashes, fire officials offer these tips:
• Never store ashes in bags or boxes.
• Place discarded ashes in a heavy metal container, douse with water, and cover with fitted metal lid.
• Store the container outside, away from structures, decks, fences, wood piles or other combustible materials.
• Never use a vacuum cleaner to pick up ashes.
• Contact your local trash collection agency for their disposal recommendations after ashes have cooled and embers are out.
General fire safety tips:
• Make sure you have working smoke alarms on every level of your home, outside each sleeping area, and inside each bedroom. Test them at least once a month.
• Keep anything that can burn at least three feet from space heaters and other heat sources.
• Never leave the kitchen when something is cooking.
• Keep candles and matches out of the reach of children.
• Extinguish all fires, even candles, when you leave the room or go to sleep.
• Remember to call 911 for all fires, no matter how small.
Who or what is the Tahoe Fire & Fuels Team ?
http://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/stelprd3812893.pdf
Moral… Thanks
Tahoe Fire and Fuels Team, I’ll add to your list if you don’t mind. If you are cleaning out the ash from your stove or fireplace, do it the day AFTER your gabage pick up day.
Let them sit in a metal garbage can away from anything combustible for a full week before they are picked up by the garbage company. Ths means NOT on a wooden deck or near pine needles or by any wooden structure, House, shed, garage or fences.
I would aloso suggest a fire extinguisher for the kitchen and on for the furnace area and one for outdoors.
If you have vacation homes in your neighborhood and they don’t rake up the pine needles and pine cones then YOU do it and drag their cans out to the curb on pick up day. That’s what I do, just being a good neighbor and helping reduce fire danger as it only takes one spark or floating ember from a fireplace to start a fire. Also keep your roof clean of pine needles and broken pine branches.
Commercial grow houses are also a “growing problem”. If you smell the skunk smell when you go outside, you probably have a grow house nearby. Grow houses can catch on fire because of the overburdend electrical system causing a house fire like what happened to the house behind me, just a few feet away from a wooden fence seperating the properties.
Be fire safe, OLS