Smoke filled the inside of a red trailer parked outside Rifle’s Ute Theatre last Thursday — the result of some burning toast. Except the smoke wasn’t real. And neither was the toast.
Both were part of the Fire Safety Simulator, a trailer equipped with a mock kitchen offering hands-on experience in preventing and escaping house fires. It visited Rifle last Thursday as part of a series organized by the Middle Colorado Watershed Council exploring wildfire and water.
Cooking-related fires are the leading cause of residential fires in the United States, said Kimberly Spuhler, the community risk reduction unit chief for the Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control, which owns the simulator.
“We get distracted, and we lose track of what's on the stove or in the oven,” she said.
The mobile simulator gives people a chance to practice what to do if a home fire breaks out. For instance, turning off a home’s circuit breakers in the event of an electrical fire, or sliding a metal lid onto a grease fire burning in a pot.
For children, the simulator is also an opportunity to rectify bad fire safety habits.
“Kids don't understand that they still have to get out of their home when the smoke alarms go off,” said Spuhler, noting that parents often inadvertently teach their children to ignore smoke alarms when they go off while cooking dinner.
The simulator was designed with kids in mind, but Spuhler said most adults need fire safety practice too (“When was the last time you did a fire drill?” she asked).
One of the easiest fire safety precautions is to close the doors in a home to prevent the spread of flames and smoke. A closed door can hold back a fire for 20 minutes, Spuhler said, buying precious time for firefighters to arrive.
Those minutes are more crucial than ever, as house fires often burn far quicker today than in the past due to the more flammable materials used in newer home construction.
According to Spuhler, people often have as little as three minutes to exit their home before it fills up with smoke and flames, compared to 30 minutes in the ‘70s and ‘80s.
For house fires caused by lithium-ion batteries — those found in many common electronic devices, like cell phones and laptops — smoke can fill a home in e as little as 30 seconds, Spuhler said. Fire departments across the country are seeing more and more of these fires.
“[The batteries] are just explosive,” she said, noting that fires created by lithium-ion batteries burn hotter and faster, and produce toxic smoke that contains cancer-causing compounds. They’re also more difficult to extinguish.
Spuhler recommends using only manufacturer-approved chargers and storing devices on non-combustible surfaces.
As wildfire season approaches, she noted that much of the safety practice for residential fires applies to wildfire as well, including removing flammable vegetation from the perimeter of a home and creating an evacuation plan.
