I’ve written a few articles about fire prevention one of them linked here: link with respect to a site that has lots of fire prevention tips. I’ve also written about the dangers of space heaters.

Today I want to write about the dangers of old, or overheating electrical cords, specifically, if you are using extension cords or multi-outlet cords in your home. We all do it. In fact, recently I updated all the outlet cords in our home office because we couldn’t remember how old the ones were that we were using. Plus, we upgraded some power surge protectors for those outlet cords that were being used for our office equipment like computers and printers.

What got me thinking about this post though was what I read as I was reviewing a condominium resale certificate for a client the other night. In two months of the Home Owner’s Association board meeting minutes were remarks about fires that had started in individual units over the course of about 6 months. This association only has 67 units and 2 units had experienced fires only a few months apart from each other. While that is a small percentage overall it is still scary that if either of these fires had gotten out of control many more units would have been affected. Granted, this is a building from 1992 so it should have a sprinkler system and hardwired smoke detectors and thankfully both fires were stopped within the units walls. But, what about those buildings that are grandfathered against these requirements? You can see where I’m going with this as we’ve all read stories of those kinds of buildings burning and people being hurt or killed.

It’s imperative that anyone using extension cords be careful and to check or replace them regularly.  Perhaps as Daylight Savings Time is a recommended time to change out the batteries in your smoke detectors perhaps it should also be the time to check your power cords around the house.