Learn BEFORE you burn

The Fire Marshall's office is very concerned that people are turning to wood as a source of heat due to the hight cost of oil and that they are doing so without a good base of wood burning knowledge.

The Fire Marshall makes the following recommendations.

(1) Have your chimney cleaned and inspected.

(2) Inspect all of your smoke stack including where it connects to the stove and where in goes through any walls.

(3) When cleaning your stove put your ashes in a metal container to let them cool before disposing of them.

(4) Get a good kindling fire burning before you add large pieces of wood.

(5) Never close your stove's damper all the way. Oxygen is required to have a good clean burning fire.

(6) Burn seasoned wood only. If you do burn grean wood, make certain to mix it in with seasoned wood. Grean wood creates more creosote.

(7) Open your damper more before you open the stove door to prevent a back draft that might draw smoke and sparks into the house.

(8) Keep all combustable items away from the stove and the smoke stack.

(9) Make certain that you put fresh batteries in your smoke alarm at the start of the heating season.

(10) If you even susbect that you have a chimney fire, call 911 and evacutate the building.

For more information you can go to maine.gov/firemarshall