Blog : House Insurance Fire Safety Tips for Thanksgiving

I just love this time of year, especially the food.  I don’t know about your household, but my mom always went over the top on Thanksgiving Day.   She cooked turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, sauerkraut, peas and mashed potatoes.  I haven’t even discussed the deserts.   We moved here from the Eastern shore of Maryland to Fort Pierce, Florida and she brought down that good old hometown cooking from the North East part of the country.   

I am hungry now and you are probably wondering to yourself – I thought this was about fire safety?

Let me tell you about one of my Thanksgivings. We were renting a lakeside house in Sebring, Florida (50 miles northwest of Okeechobee, Florida). My wife started a pan with grease in it to brown the ham hocks and I called her to come to the other side of the house and she did. About ten minutes later, I said, do you smell smoke?  She said, oh crap, I had something on the stove.  Thankfully we caught it really quick and there was no damage, but that could have been a disaster. I was thinking to myself; I hope they have house insurance?  Then I remembered that my liability portion of my homeowners insurance would have stepped in and covered this occurrence if they had no coverage (renters insurance will do the same if you do not own a home – good reason to purchase renters insurance)

Every year during the Thanksgiving Holidays, there are about 1600 house fires.  The majority of the fires are due to unattended cooking.   Cooking too many items at once.   Leaving towels or items that can easily catch fire near the hot stove to name a few.

You have to make sure that all cooking is attended.  And if you have to step away, leave someone to watch it and make sure it is a person who will not sample too much food – that would be me.

In Sebring, Florida, many households deep-fry their turkeys.  Well here is another fire hazard.  There are around 1000 house fires a year due to this hazard. Here are some safety tips for deep frying correctly:

The good news is, if a fire does happen, your home-owners insurance will cover these perils. The downside is that you will have a deductible.  Deductibles can range from $1,000 to as high as $5,000.  This is definitely the wrong time of the year to have to shell out any extra money. 

As I am writing this, Thanksgiving dinner preparations are under way at my house and the aromas are making me hungry and I have to go now.   Next time we will talk about Christmas.