Safety Reminders for Snow and Ice Storms

[Persepone]

Once again, news stories feature preventable tragedies.

Carbon Monoxide

Never ride or sit in a car with the engine running without cracking a window—no matter how cold it is. Never leave your kids in a running car alone. If the tailpipe gets blocked with snow, ice, etc. they can die quickly of carbon monoxide. If, for some reason, you must be out in a vehicle during a storm like this, a battery-operated CO detector in the vehicle with you might not be a bad idea.

At home, make sure you have a couple of battery-operated CO detectors in the house in addition to any plug-in CO detectors you have. If your power is out, your plug-in CO detectors won’t work. If you are heating with a fireplace, kerosene heater, gas fireplace, etc. CO is a potential hazard. For that matter, if your furnace, etc. malfunctions, you have a potential hazard. First Alert makes decent portable CO detectors. Make sure that you crack a window if you are using a fireplace, kerosene heater, gas fireplace, etc. This is especially important if you have a relatively new house with good insulation. You need fresh air coming in to replace the oxygen the fireplace, heater, etc. is consuming. Remember that snow/ice is probably blocking up the normal “air leaks” into your house!
Don’t run your clothes dryer, bathroom fans, etc. until you clear the vents. Make sure that they stay clear. If you have a gas dryer, the hazard is CO—but with the electric dryer, bathroom fans, etc. you will probably overheat the devices if the vents are blocked and this poses a fire hazard.

Fire Safety

Fire safety is especially important during/after a storm because the fire department probably cannot get to you. Fire extinguishers should be an integral part of your storm preparation kits. If you are using a fireplace, kerosene heater, other emergency heat source, keep one or two fire extinguishers rated for that type of fire between the device and the door to the room it is in. While red fire extinguishers may not go well with your living room decor, they can save your life. Buy them and put them where you need them.

Don’t use these things if there is a chance the vents/chimneys, etc. are clogged. See CO danger above. Also, make sure you have good fire screens for your fireplace and make sure you have some form of secure barricade around wood stoves, kerosene heaters and other “hot” surfaces if you have children. Even older children “forget” that they can get wicked burns from touching these hot surfaces—and if they are not used to them, they will forget. Do not allow children to run or chase each other near these devices. If you have to put the baby or small child in a playpen and listen to him/her howl, that’s still better than a bad burn when you can’t get to medical help.

Candles are very dangerous because people aren’t used to them and “forget.” If they fall over, they catch things on fire; if they are too close to flammable objects, they catch those on fire, etc. But the real danger is that you reach over one and catch your sleeve on fire, etc. Or you open a door and the draft blows a curtain or other fabric over the candle. Never leave a room when there is a lit candle in the room! Don’t leave children alone in a room with a lit candle. Yes, open flames consume oxygen.

Kerosene lamps are hazardous because if you knock one over or it falls and breaks, you now have flammable liquid. Also, occasionally kerosene lamps do a sort of flash or flare up! Especially true of Aladdin-type kerosene lamps, but I’ve seen it with regular kerosene lamps. If you use these, make sure you have a fire extinguisher handy. And, like candles, don’t leave a kerosene lamp lit in a room without an adult in it. And yes, even kerosene lamps consume oxygen.

Using propane camping lanterns, camping stoves, etc. in the house is dangerous because these also pose a CO threat as well as a potential fire hazard. If you must, crack a window.

Keep an Exit Available

Go out periodically during the storm and shovel snow away from doors, etc. so that you can get out quickly in emergency. If you have 3 feet of snow against a door that opens outward, you won’t be able to open it. If the snow drifts 5 or 6 feet high against the door.... Try to rig up some type of windbreak so that the snow/drifts are far enough away from your door that you can open it. If you can’t do that, remove your screen/storm door entirely if it opens out, but your main door opens inward. But make sure that you have an exit. If you are counting on going out through your garage, can you open it quickly without power? Most garage doors do have a manual option, but you need to be very strong to get it open. I don’t think it’s a good idea to depend on getting out the garage door.

Keep “Your” Fire Hydrant Clear During/After a Storm

No, it’s “not your job.” Do it anyway. Even if it is in front of someone else’s house. Before the storm, spend a couple of bucks on tall driveway markers and mark its exact location so that you know where it is (and where to dig). Make sure it is shoveled out during/after the storm. When minutes count, if the fire hydrant is uncovered, the firemen don’t have to waste time digging it out. The first few times, you will be alone in this task, but eventually the rest of your neighbors will realize this is not a stupid endeavor and they will assist you.

Keep your Kids out of the paths of vehicles with snowplows!

A truck with a snowplow on the front of it cannot see a child (or many adults) in front of it! We had an adult killed by a snowplow in a storm earlier this year! The plow operator never knew he had hit, run over and killed someone.

Also, children have no clue about braking distances, loss of control, etc. Kids think that if they step out in front of a car or truck, that the vehicle will stop and not hit them. They don’t realize the vehicle may not be able to stop! Make sure your kids don’t “play chicken” with cars and trucks out on the road...

Sleds are fun, but...

Watch where your kids go sledding! My father lost a kidney as a small child when he hit a stone wall at the bottom of a sled run. I also watched an adult friend of mine who should have known better go down a steep hill on a sled and right through the ice into a (luckily shallow) river! What’s at the bottom of the hill? A street? A stone wall? A barbed wire fence? Some other hazard?

Teach your kids to roll off the sled if they go out of control. If they aren’t old enough to understand this and to do it in a panic situation, go sledding with them...

If your kids have ski helmets, make them wear them while sledding.

Watch your kids for Frostbite

When kids are out playing, they don’t notice how cold they are... Wind chill factors are meaningless to them. Frostbite does not have any warning signs kids will notice. You need to monitor this and bring them inside.

[JenyEliza]

Bump....excellent advice. Useful to re-read it, even if you think you've got safety covered.

Maybe this could be a "sticky" since so much winter weather is occuring around the country right now.

Thanks for posting this, Persepone!