Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) encourages customers to use caution and put safety first when decorating this holiday season to reduce the risk of a fire in the home. Lighting equipment, candles, menorahs and the Christmas trees can become holiday hazards and spark a devastating fire. By having a plan and making minor adjustments to decorating and cooking, the holiday season can remain festive and safe for everyone.
“We know home fires increase during the holidays, so we encourage our customers to slow down, take the right precautions and stay safe this holiday season,” said Laurie Giammona, PG&E Senior Vice President and Chief Customer Officer. “After an unprecedented year the holidays will be extra special as long as you make safety part of your smaller family celebrations.”
According to the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), candle fires increase this month. Almost 60% of home fires involving holiday decorations were started by candles in the month of December compared to 30% in January and November. The two peak days for candle fires are Christmas Day and Christmas Eve. Also, Hanukkah is a time to pay extra special attention to candles also.
Here are some tips to keep you and your loved ones safe during the holidays:
Candle and Cooking Safety
- Never use lit candles to decorate a tree. Always extinguish candles before leaving the room or going to bed.
- Keep lit candles away from decorations and other things that can burn.
- Never leave a lit menorah or candles unattended.
- Stay in the kitchen when cooking on the stovetop. Start with a clean oven to reduce the risk of a grease fire.
The family Christmas tree also can become an unexpected hazard. According to the NFPA, on average, Christmas tree home fires resulted in death four times more often than home fires without a tree. Lighting equipment was involved in almost 40 percent of home tree fires.
Christmas Tree Safety
- Before placing a fresh tree in the stand, cut two inches” from the base of the trunk to help it absorb water.
- Make sure the tree is at least three feet away from any heat source, like fireplaces, radiators, candles, heat vents or lights.
- Purchase flame-retardant metallic or artificial trees. For real trees, make sure it has fresh, green needles that aren’t easily broken. Keep live trees as moist as possible by giving them water daily.
PG&E also encourages residents to create a household emergency preparedness plan and share it with the entire family.
Be careful of hot cocoa too. You might burn your tongue.
Good tip, ZZ! That needs to be added to the CDC web site. Most people have no idea that hot cocoa could burn your tongue. And if you’ve been exposed to anyone with a burnt tongue, you need to quarantine for at least 14 days.
Never boil gasoline in the kitchen while smoking a cigarette.
Don’t over-eat or you will add the Covid-19 to your waist-line!
From the company that can’t keep their wires on the pole comes tips for daily living. Excuse me, I have to go vacuum up those brown needles on the carpet.
PG&E.
PG&E Corp. received its criminal sentence Thursday for igniting the deadliest wildfire in California history: a $4 million fine that the judge and prosecutor acknowledged may have been too small for the crimes committed.Jun 18, 2020 – Sac Bee
Thanks but no thanks for your advice.
Ricardoh & Noj-
Two thumbs up 👍👍 on your comments!
It seems everybody these days is giving advise. Oh well, I might as well also. Dont eat yellow snow, dont run with scissors in your hand, dont wrestle with a lollipop in your mouth and dont play chicken with a freight train.
Don’t forget about how dangerous Q-Tips can be……
Always wear your seat belt!
The company responsible for causing explosions and fires that have cost thousands of dollars in losses and, most importantly, caused the DEATH of dozens of lives is now telling us to be safe and responsible…COMICAL!
Right! And don’t try to stop a PG&E forest fire with your garden hose!!! Or at least wear a mask while doing so, OK?
Who really cares what PGE has to say? They are nothing more than a monopoly and hold their customers hostage year round in the name of safety.
And for the bonus round, P.G.&E, has just gotten approval to increase our monthly bills for both gas and electric by 13% starting next year. This was approved by none other than our Public Utilities Commission. Imagine that.
I think those two should get a room because their sharing the sheets…..
There is a lot of complaining here about PG&E. I personally know three PG&E employees. They live in really nice houses.
That’s rich PG&E giving out safety advice. Maybe they should save the money on such publications and better spend them on equipment upgrades and lawsuits.
They are raising rates again in March as many are already struggling to pay their bills as it is. In an effort to save now more than ever, I go without putting our heater on and we just wear our jackets and knit hats inside inside. It shouldn’t have to be like that.
Even worse the very people that were victims of negligence on the part of this company find themselves having to pay the rate hikes to cover their settlements. It is appalling.
Two feel good stories of the year for the execs to think about this holiday season from the comfort of their heated mansions.
Thanks for all of the tips!
Greetings and Salutations, fellow Claycordians! I don’t comment very much nowadays, but when I saw this post, I felt compelled to speak. I see that some of you are using this post as an excuse to criticize PG&E. I would like to urge you to pay attention to their warnings about candles, and if you like, disregard that the warning is coming from PG&E. I’m going to tell you a cautionary tale about candles. I know from personal experience just how dangerous they can be. Some of you who have been on Claycord for a long time may have seen me tell this story before. I feel the need to tell it again.
It was Christmas Day, 20 years ago now. I was at home by myself, and making the best of it. I was fixing one of those Safeway holiday dinners (which takes a few hours of oven time, even though it’s pre-made), and I had Christmas music playing on my TV on one of those audio-only music channels. I used to enjoy the ambiance of candles, and had several of various lengths on a decorative tray on my coffee table. The cat was relaxing on the couch, and at one point, I bent over to pet her. Unbeknownst to me, this caused the hem of my dress to get into the flame. This is when I found out just how flammable clothing can be.
The lower half of my dress burned up very quickly. And my underwear. I forgot to stop, drop, and roll. In my panic, I was batting at the flames. I thought, “water water water water, I must get into some water!” The shower! I ran for the bathroom. In my frantic rush, I bashed my shin really hard against the metal track on the edge of the tub that the shower door ran on. It hurt like hell, but I couldn’t deal with that; I was on fire. I got in and turned the shower on cold. Soon the fire was out. I got out and knew I was in trouble; I needed to go to the hospital.
I peeled off what was left of my dress and underwear. I had two robes, a shorter microfiber one and a full length terry cloth one. I put them both on, and slippers. At this point, I should’ve called 911 and let the ambulance come get me, but I didn’t fully understand yet just how bad off I was and I was worried about being billed for it. I remembered to turn off the oven. Then I wrapped my burnt hands in oven mitts and kitchen towels and I don’t know how I did it, but I somehow managed to drive my car to the E.R.
At the E.R., they let me in right away, I didn’t have to deal with triage. They were giving me doses of morphine every 5 minutes until I turned pale. They determined that I was burned too severely for them to treat and that I needed to go to where there was a burn unit. When it was time to sign the paperwork, I had to sign with an “X” because I was too burnt to sign properly. They loaded me into the ambulance and took me to Alta Bates Medical Center in Berkeley, where there was a burn unit at the time.
I had first degree burns on my right hand, second degree burns on my left hand, which is my dominant one, and third degree burns on my buttocks. They took a photo of my butt when I was admitted, which they showed to my dad when he arrived and that’s when I saw it. It was black, and I am a Caucasian person. The left cheek needed skin graft surgery. My left hand was horribly swollen, was several different colors, and was covered in giant blisters. I was in the hospital for 3 weeks, the majority of it in the critical care unit. Let me tell you–burn pain will take you places you never knew existed. I was having a hard time coping with it. Part of the recovery process from a skin graft is that they made me lay under a heat lamp, with the donor site exposed to it. It was painful and I was terrified of that heat lamp.
When I got home, my dad helped me throw out each and every candle that I had in my house. No more candles for me. During one of my outpatient follow-up visits with the burn doctor, he showed me a poster on the wall that had an image of the different layers of skin, tissue, and nerves. He pointed to a spot about halfway down and said that’s how deep my burn was (on my buttocks).
Physically, I am healed. Psychologically, there is baggage that hasn’t gone away. For awhile, I attended a burn support group that was meeting at the same hospital where I stayed. It really helped to be able to talk to others who had similar experiences. After a time, the group was moved to another hospital on the other side of the bay, and that no longer worked for me. I am afraid of open flame and uncomfortable with direct heat.
Because the accident happened on Christmas Day, I no longer can really enjoy the spirit of the season. I’ve tried, bur I can’t stop reliving what happened. The uneasiness starts around Thanksgiving and I feel like I can’t relax until after New Year’s. This Christmas is the 20th anniversary.
So please, heed the warning about candles. I don’t care if it came from PG&E and if you question their motives. Candles are dangerous. Yes, they create a nice ambiance and some of the scented ones smell fantastic. But think twice before you use them. If you do, be careful where you put them and keep anything flammable well away from them. For me, it isn’t worth it. I know I wrote a book here, but you all needed to hear my story and I needed to tell it. Peaceful holidays to you. I just want it to be over.
Thank you, ChampagneKitty. Thank you so much for your message, and I’m so glad you made it. I know it was horrifically painful. What a horrendous ordeal. I can hardly believe you drove yourself to the Hospital! You had to have been going into shock along the way. I bet we both had the same burn unit doctor at Alta Bates Medical Center in Berkeley, Dr. Gerald Kaplan. My home was in Oakland and the ambulance took me straight there about 26 years ago when I had a seizure in the bathtub and scalded myself. I don’t know what I would’ve done if I was conscious. As it was, I woke up with firemen in my bathroom. I only had second degree burns and it was excruciating. I asked several times for something for the pain in the ambulance, but I had to wait till I got to the unit. They gave me morphine shots till my blood pressure (which was extremely high from the pain) normalized. My takeaway from the experience was always turn off the hot water before the cold. Dr. Kaplan would say “NEVER have your water heated so hot it will injure you”. I couldn’t do that in my old house though, I would have to shower and bathe in tepid water. As awful as it must’ve been ChampagneKitty (and I know the pain was miserable, and for a very long time) we were lucky. When I was in the unit there was a young woman from Sacramento who’d been there for nine months. I remembered hearing about her in the news. Her house exploded and she had to have so many grafts, and grow new skin over so much of her body it was insane. I don’t know how she did it, but she had made it through to the point where she was glad she had. Life can change so suddenly.
Hello, Silva! Thank you for reading my story. I’m glad that you appreciate it. Yes, my burn surgeon was Dr. Kaplan! And I remember his well-known secretary! I didn’t know that you’re a burn survivor too. I’m sorry that it happened to you. You’re right about being lucky. I mean…we weren’t lucky that it happened, but it could have been so much worse! When I was going to the burn support group there, I met a man who was in the Tosco Refinery explosion in Martinez in February 1999. 4 of his co-workers died and he was severely injured. He was very disfigured and his life had become an endless string of surgeries. He carried in his shirt pocket a photo of himself so people could see what he looked like before his accident. If you were to see me, you would never know that I was burned. And yes, that was kinda stupid of me to drive myself to the E.R. Later, my dad and his girlfriend (stepmom now) went there and she drove my car back home.