Officials: Think about fire safety this winter

Experts encourage installing, checking smoke detectors after four fires in S.F. County recently

Officials say there have been four fires in Santa Fe County within the past week and are warning people to take caution as they heat their homes amid dropping temperatures.

The most recent fire involved a recreational vehicle on Los Pinos Road on Wednesday, which sent one person to the hospital, county spokeswoman Carmelina Hart said. The cause of the fire is still under investigation.

Also on Wednesday, a fire destroyed a home in Nambé and sent one person to the hospital

A house fire Saturday in Chimayó killed two young girls — 12-year-old Elliana Martinez and 10-year-old Aaleah Carbajal. The state fire marshal is still investigating what led to the blaze. Later that day, a century-old home burned down in Madrid; no one was injured.

“What we’re seeing is, as these temperatures are going down, our call volume is starting to go up,” said county fire prevention specialist Jeff Folgate. “Part of that is obviously we’re using heating appliances to heat our homes and keep us warm at night. But that comes with a slew of different concerns we have as a fire department that obviously we want homeowners and residents to be aware of.”

Folgate said most fatal house fires occur at night. One of the biggest issues the department sees are smoke and carbon monoxide detectors that are faulty or haven’t been inspected.

“Two out of every 5 fire deaths are happening in homes with no working smoke alarms,” he said. “For us, that is a huge push, to not only have smoke alarms but to make sure that they’re working.”

The smell of smoke often does not wake people up as one might expect, Folgate said. The toxins in smoke induce deeper stages of unconsciousness.

Proper maintenance of fireplaces or wood stoves also can prevent unsafe conditions that may result in house fires, Folgate added.

Another step to protect a home is proper space heater use, Folgate said. That includes ensuring proper ventilation of the space heater

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and plugging it in directly into a wall outlet, rather than an extension cord or power strip.

These steps are crucial, as the way fire interacts with households today may be more volatile than before.

“Fire is much, much faster today,” Folgate said. “We’re seeing flashovers occur on the average of about 3½ to four minutes.”

Flashovers occur when the room is heated to the point where nearly everything ignites at once, he said. That can create temperatures around 1,000 degrees that not even the most well equipped firefighter can withstand.

Folgate said fire departments see the most tragic results in the evening.

“I’m not real concerned with something that happens in the daytime or when we’re awake because we’re gonna notice something’s wrong and we’re gonna respond to it,” he said. “We have to look statistically at where do we have our catastrophic failures. Those failures are in the middle of the night when we are asleep.”