American Red Cross offers safety tips to help prevent home fires caused by holiday decorations
The holiday season is here, and the American Red Cross wants everyone to stay safe from home fires as they decorate their homes for the upcoming festivities.
Decorations like trees, lights and candles increase the risk of home fires during the holidays—with Christmas, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day being the top three days for home candle fires, according to the National Fire Protection Association.
The Red Cross wants people to stay safe from home fires—the nation’s most frequent disaster—by testing their smoke alarms and practicing their home fire escape plan with free resources at redcross.org/homefires. In addition, you can follow these 10 simple safety tips as you put up lights and ornaments:
HOME FIRE CAMPAIGN SAVE LIVES Every eight minutes, donations to the Red Cross help someone affected by a disaster—most often, home fires. Sadly, these events take more lives each year than all other natural disasters combined in the U.S. To prevent these tragedies, the Red Cross launched the national Home Fire Campaign in October 2014, working with volunteers and community partners to install free smoke alarms and help families create escape plans.
Through the campaign, the Red Cross and its partners have reached more than 1.6 million people and helped save at least 474 lives across the country by:
You can help save lives by making a financial donation to support our mission, signing up to become a volunteer or taking steps to protect your own family from home fires. Visit redcross.org to learn more.