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Tips to stay safe in your home this holiday season

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — As Thanksgiving approaches, local fire departments are reminding people to stay safe in their kitchen.

One of the biggest causes of fires this time of year is unattended food on the stove or in the oven.

“They leave things unattended, grease gets too hot, they walk off they get distracted, they get a phone call, and the next thing you know there’s a fire in the kitchen,” Wayne Township Fire Department Captain Mike Pruitt said.

As the temperatures start to drop, there are ways to keep your home warm without starting a fire. In the past three years, the Wayne Township Fire Department has responded to two fatal fires started by a space heater. Pruitt recommends keeping space heaters at least three feet away from anything.

“The problems we run into is we leave them on when we leave, we leave them on when we go to bed, put them too close to something that’s combustible, and that starts a fire with tragic consequences,” he said.

When it comes to your fireplace, there are some guidelines you should follow as well.

“If you’re going to start using a fireplace, one get a certified chimney sweep every year, make sure it’s clean of any creosote, so when you’re going out to get some firewood to throw in the fireplace, we want to make sure that it’s seasoned wood and when I say seasoned wood that means that may be wood that’s sat and dried for a year, especially if it’s a hard wood before we use it, it’s not something we want to go and cut the tree down, and the woods behind you and bring that wood immediately in because it’s full of moisture, it’s going to build up creosote in the chimney and that’s where we are going to see the chimney fire,” Pruitt said.