Three house fires over the past four days, including two on Tuesday — one of them fatal — mark the annual arrival of Iowa’s dangerous winter fire season.
The blazes prompted state and federal fire and consumer safety officials to warn Iowans of the threat posed by space heaters, unattended stoves and other fire hazards as the colder weather and busy holiday season approach.
State Fire Marshal Ray Reynolds said Iowa has had about 40 fire-related deaths so far this year, already near the annual average of 46 such fatalities. Most house fires happen between October and May, especially in winter, he added.
“We see fatalities increase when it gets cold,” Reynolds said.
Investigators in Jefferson are trying to determine whether a space heater ignited a house fire early Tuesday that killed 18-year-old Cody Garreans-Walsh and sent his younger brother, Nicholas, 14, to an Iowa City hospital with burns on his hands and feet.
The boys’ mother, Sandy Garreans, said she heard a boom and smelled smoke before seeing flames down the hall.
Her fiance could save only Nicholas from the boys’ upstairs rooms. The home didn’t have a working smoke detector, firefighters said.
“I just can’t believe it’s real,” Garreans said. “I can't believe I lost my son.”
The second house fire on Tuesday broke out shortly after 7 a.m., in a four-unit apartment building in Waterloo.
Fire officials credited a smoke alarm in a second-floor apartment with awakening residents and alerting them to the fire, the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier reported in its online edition.
Two people inside the ground-floor apartment where the fire started managed to escape to a porch roof where they were rescued by firefighters. Both were treated for smoke inhalation but were not hospitalized.
Steven Jordan, the city’s fire marshal said the fire appears to have been electrical in nature and started near a couch in the living room/kitchen area of the apartment.
On Saturday, witnesses reported hearing a small explosion before a fire engulfed a house in rural Fayette.
No one was home at the time and the cause remains under investigation.
The heightened risk of house fires over the winter months means now is the time for people to shore up their stockpiles of both batteries and common sense.
“We tell people the importance of changing the battery in smoke detectors when the time changes” between daylight saving time and standard time, Reynolds said.
In 86 percent of fatal fires over the past five years, Reynolds said smoke detectors were either faulty or had dead or missing batteries.
That’s prompted the fire marshal’s office to work with federal agencies and local businesses to install 21,000 donated smoke detectors free of charge in homes with young children.
Another 11,000 will be installed in homes in which parents requested the devices through grade school surveys statewide.
The 31,000 detectors would have cost about $736,000 had the parents purchased them in stores, he said.
Young children and elderly are at the most risk of fire-related deaths, Reynolds said.
This year alone, 158 Iowans were saved by smoke detectors. Most were sleeping when the fire broke out, Reynolds said.
“Relying on waking up on your own is not a good plan,” he said.
In Des Moines, fire department spokesman Capt. Steve Brown said home fires spike in the city many winters, but not all. “This year we haven’t seen that many,” Brown said.
Cooking accidents are blamed for most of the house fires, but candles, chimneys and furnaces are also in the mix.
Space heaters aren’t a huge problem as long as residents plug them directly into the wall, keep them three feet away from other items, and turn them off when the room is empty.
“Mainly, it’s carelessness that causes these fires,” Brown said.
Patty Davis, spokeswoman for the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, said space heaters are a significant threat in winter, though untended stoves cause far more fires.
“It’s very real,” Davis said of the threat from space heaters, which can ignite drapes, upholstery or blankets. “They can kill.”
Based on 2006-08 data, the most recent available, portable heaters cause about 1,700 home fires a year in the United States, Davis said.
Those fires kill 70 and send another 180 to the hospital annually.
“We would urge consumers to never leave the room while a space heater is running,” Davis said. “Don’t go to sleep with that space heater on. Make sure it is at least three feet away from drapes, furniture and bedding.”
By comparison, stoves and other cooking equipment caused 149,500 fires a year, while heating and cooling systems are blamed for another 56,500.
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