Christmas fire safety with West Yorkshire Fire Service

Christmas Tree - Fire Safety at Kirkstall Fire Station - Leeds.

Transcript

00:00 We're here today at Leeds Fire Station to promote our Christmas Fire Safety Week.

00:05 Like I said, we are looking at promoting fire safety messages that relate to Christmas activities.

00:11 We're demonstrating how quickly real and artificial Christmas trees ignite and can cause significant

00:20 fire damage if they do get involved.

00:23 The message is around making sure that people have got smoke alarms in place, have a fire

00:27 safety plan and the items that could ignite a Christmas tree are safely managed.

00:32 Q. And what can cause it?

00:36 Too many Christmas lights, maybe candles?

00:38 There's a number of things over Christmas that can cause fires.

00:43 Thankfully, fairly limited in terms of the number of incidents we get around electrical

00:50 lights, candles, cooking.

00:53 The main areas that we want to focus on is making sure that people don't overload sockets,

00:57 put too many Christmas lights into extension leads and don't have numerous extension leads

01:01 into one socket.

01:04 The other big risk is around candle safety, making sure that they're not left unattended,

01:08 they're away from children, away from any flammable materials such as curtains that

01:12 can ignite quickly.

01:14 And the key is then that we don't want these Christmas trees involved in fire because of

01:18 the speed that they do react when once ignited.

01:22 The message around cooking is make sure that people don't cook under the influence, either

01:28 coming in from a night out on Christmas Day, that they make sure that the hobs are turned

01:32 off, that items around the hob are kept away from ignition sources such as a gas ring.

01:39 We all know that Christmas is a hectic time and there's lots of items around the kitchen

01:43 so it's making sure that they're kept well clear from any hob.

01:46 But obviously, like I say, people not coming in from nights out, starting to use cooking

01:51 appliances and then leaving stuff unattended.

01:56 If somebody unfortunately came back home or there because it's true went on fire, what

02:01 sort of things should they do?

02:03 First thing that we would say is get out of any property, do not enter any property if

02:07 it's on fire and ring 999 and ask for the fire service and alert any other people that

02:13 are in the house but not to enter and to get out as quickly as they can.

02:16 Part of that is making sure that they've got a plan of escape prior to any Christmas festivities,

02:24 particularly if there's guests coming round, of how to get out of the house, where the

02:27 keys are and most important to all that is making sure they've got working smoke alarms

02:32 on each floor of the property.