Local House Fires, how to help and take some safety precautions of your own

It’s terrifying how many local house fires we’ve been hearing about lately. This story is a combination of a recap of these and how you can help, some real steps I’ve taken and suggestions to reduce your own risk of loss of people, pets and property. And of course, as anything with me seems to be, a twist of irony in that I feel asleep writing this story and was jarred awake very early the next morning (literally from sound asleep to standing up, in one second–me and everyone else in the house) by our entire collection of fire alarms blasting, for the first time ever. With Jay in New Zealand for a few weeks, this became my problem to deal with. Emergency Signal, our local monitoring service, was right on it, and even though it was a Sunday morning, their tech Jake was at the house within an hour, replacing a faulty detector. No fire, thank goodness. 

Local to Westminster, there was a devastating fire at 238 South Ashburnham Road on December 14. The two women who were living in the first and second floor apartments are known to many, and a variety of initiatives to bring them financial assistance have been posted. If you know Maggie Neff or Amber Cardwell personally, do what you can to help them, and if you don’t, but would like to help, here are the links to gofundme initiatives to directly benefit each of them.
Maggie Neff gofundme
Amber Cardwell gofundme

In Winchendon, a Christmas Eve fire at 715 School Street completely destroyed the home of Jessie Bigwood and Matt Parmenter. 
Jessie Bigwood and Matt Parmenter gofundme

In Brookline, a $13Million, 13,000 square-foot house on Sargent Road, caught fire the day after Christmas, and the ultimate preventable tragedy, a family from Newton, who were staying at their lake home in New Hampshire, failed to show up for a family Christmas event, and a well-being check by police found the entire family of four dead from carbon monoxide poisoning, likely caused by their propane heating system, in a house with no detectors. A family of 4 died Christmas Day at their New Hampshire lake house after likely carbon monoxide leak

As a realtor, I go in a lot of houses and I see a lot of ceiling-mounted detector brackets with no detectors attached, a huge amount of older and yellowed detectors, and many hanging open with the battery removed. Massachusetts law requires that proper detectors must be in place for a home to be sold. This is enforced by the real estate transaction attorneys who won’t allow the closing to be finalized until there is a current smoke and carbon monoxide detector inspection certificate. Although it’s sometimes a pain to deal with, I actually like this requirement because most people buying a home are much more interested in painting and furniture placement than they are thinking about their smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. 

I live in Princeton, which has no municipal water supply, which means that there aren’t hydrants, but there are more than 20 fire ponds, for the specific purpose of pumping water to fight fires. I’ve seen people in Westminster complaining about a lack of fire hydrants in some of the more remote areas. The reality is, if your area is not served by municipal water, they can’t just drop a hydrant in the ground. About 6 months after we moved to Princeton, there was a 20 alarm fire at 30 Mountain Road, destroying the old Princeton Inn. This residence was practically within sight distance of the fire station, yet the home was a total loss. 

WHAT TO DO?

SMOKE and CARBON MONOXIDE DETECTORS
It’s common sense, but you’d be amazed at how many homes I go in with outdated, disconnected and even zero smoke detectors. Make sure your smoke and carbon monoxide detectors are within date, and that you have at least one carbon monoxide detector on every level of the home, including the basement, ceiling mounted at the bottom of every set of stairs. Money well spent. Here are the requirements for type, quantity and locations of detectors if you were selling your house–you might as well have your house as close to that as possible. You can also contact your local fire department and ask them to do a courtesy walk through of your home and make suggestions as to type and placement of detectors. Here are some guidelines to prepare for an inspection (which include that you should have house numbers visible from the road = great idea).
Guide to Massachusetts Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Requirements When Selling a One- or Two- Family Residence

CHIMNEYS and DRYER VENTS
We use our fireplace a lot and have our chimney cleaned annually. We also do a lot of laundry. Today, actually, I had our dryer vents cleaned for the first time ever. I see a lot of Facebook claims from people who say they are local, but you can’t get their actual company information and they seem to dodge questions. I called Dryer Vent Wizard of Central Mass about a week ago and we set up a time for them to come today. Highly recommend them! The tech Nate was great and the all-in cost for the assessment and to get the job done, was under $300. Our vents are hard piped and only about 5 years old, yet Nate found an embarrassing amount of lint in them (actual photo above in the vac, 12″ deep on the lint). Nate’s recommendation was that we have the vent piping cleaned annually, because we have a long run of vent pipe to get the exhaust outdoors. If not for that, it sounded like every other year would be reasonable. 

FIRE BLANKET
My mother bought us each a Prepared Hero Fire Blanket to throw over the stove if we have a cooking fire. Thankfully, we’ve never needed it, but they do have good reviews, 5,000+ reviews on their own website, and 
15,000 reviews on Amazon.