MIDDLETOWN — When it comes to older homes, especially when the electrical system hasn’t been updated since the 1940s or 1950s, city officials say be careful about how much power is used.
Too much can easily overload the electrical system.
The dangers of taxing a home’s electrical system were demonstrated on Jan. 5 during a house fire on Minnesota Avenue that caused upwards of $40,000 in damages and displaced a mother and her three children. Fire Marshal Bob Hess said it’s been determined to be an electrical fire.
Hess said along with a television and other major appliances being plugged into extension cords, there were six space heaters turned on — two of which were plugged into extension cords.
“I can’t say the space heaters alone caused, but to pull that much amperage … an electrical system cannot handle that in older homes that were built in the 1940s and ’50s,” Hess said of the home built in 1948. “They’re not designed to heat whole homes and run on a 24-hour basis.”
Hess said the family had several space heaters because the home’s furnace stopped working.
While the space heaters were not the sole cause for that fire, they are dangerous if not used properly.
Three people were killed on Christmas Eve in Columbus when a space heater on a mattress caught it on fire. On Jan. 4, an elderly Miami, Fla., had plugged a space heater into an outlet with too many plugs and caught her house on fire.
Only four or five fires a year in Middletown are electrical fires, Hess said, but there could be any number of homeowners who are using space heaters improperly or overloading their home’s electrical system. In the southeastern part of the city, many homes were built between the 1920s and 1950s, and it is likely they have out-of-date wiring, city officials said. Hess said the older wiring is more susceptible for electrical overloads.
John Hall, who authored a report for the Washington, D.C.-based National Fire Protection Agency in November, said mistakes happen when it comes to using space heaters because people don’t operate them properly.
“We’re not trying to steer away people from space heating,” Hall said. “They just need to know what they are doing so they don’t fall into one of the well-known traps.”
Heating devices — which includes space heaters, furnaces and chimneys — are the number two cause of fire incidents nationally, he said. They also ranked second in Ohio from 2006 to 2010, according to the Ohio Division of State Fire Marshal.
Ohio Division of State Fire Marshal spokesman Shane Carthill said he can’t categorically say in space heater-related fires they were the primary source of heat in homes that sustained electrical fires, but said, “I do believe … they are certainly being used often.”
This time of year is when the heating-related fires happen, Carthill said.
“Most of the time, unfortunately these fires are preventable,” he said. “These types of fires are typically due to human error or accident.”
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