Thanksgiving safety tips - Arrowhead General Insurance Agency

Use these Thanksgiving safety tips to help your homeowners enjoy the day

Help your homeowner clients enjoy the start of the holiday season while taking these basic precautions to ensure their families remain safe. Safety in the kitchen is always important but even more so around the holidays. As you and your clients start preparing for the holidays and scheduling the annual family feast, keep in mind some important Thanksgiving safety tips so that everyone can enjoy time with one another.

Did you know? Thanksgiving is the leading day of the year for home fires involving cooking equipment, with three times more fires than on a typical day. In 2014 (latest statistics available), there were nearly four times as many home cooking fires on Thanksgiving as on a typical day. There are plenty of contributing factors, but negligence is the main culprit of household fires. Between 2010 and 2014, 33 percent of fires were caused due to leaving appliances unattended; 49 percent of those fires resulted in casualties. In just one year, the dollar loss amount from residential building heating resulted in as much as $605 million. These number represent a huge loss not only for insurance companies but for homeowners as well. Not only are they being displaced from their homes, most likely they or a loved one has suffered an injury or worse yet, death.

Related: Thanksgiving safety tips for personal lines clients

The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) provides an abundance of Thanksgiving safety information. You can download the cooking fire safety infographic to use on your website, blogs, Facebook and Twitter for your clients to use as a reference. You can also provide a link to this cooking information page that has useful videos and free resources to make your cooking experience fun and relaxing.

More Thanksgiving safety tips: woodstoves

As outside temperatures drop, your homeowners may also fire up their wood and pellet stoves at Thanksgiving. Remind them of these useful safety tips before they light that fire:

Have a QUALIFIED professional install stoves, chimney connectors and chimneys.
Stoves should be listed by a qualified testing laboratory.
In wood stoves, burn only DRY, seasoned wood. In pellet stoves, burn only dry, seasoned wood pellets.
Have your chimney and stove INSPECTED and cleaned by certified chimney sweepers every fall just before the heating season.
CLEAN the inside of your stove periodically using a wire brush.
Allow ashes to COOL before disposing of them. Place ashes in a covered metal container. Keep the container at least 10 feet away from the home and other buildings.
Keep a CLOSE EYE on children whenever a wood or pellet stove is being used. Remind them to stay at least 3 feet away from the stove.
INSTALL and maintain carbon monoxide alarms (CO) outside each sleeping area and on every level of the home.

Experts give these quick and easy ways to advise clients on how to protect their homes. It’s also a good time to remind your homeowners of the importance of checking both their smoke and carbon monoxide alarms at the start of the winter season. When installing and maintaining smoke alarms on every level of their home, outside each separate sleeping area and inside each bedroom. For the ultimate protection, it is recommended to interconnect the alarms; that way when one sounds, they all will sound. Make sure to test all smoke alarms at least once a month.