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People all over are all busy, it’s the holidays and families are ready to gather, exchange gifts, celebrate the new year and so on. The problem is, the excitement and the rushing around causes humans to become forgetful, so the Cottage Grove Fire and EMS Facebook page looks to help alleviate some of the forgetfulness with their quick reminders for the winter.

In the fall and spring, when clocks are changed for daylight savings time, the batteries in smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors should also be changed. Each month, every emergency device in the house should be tested to ensure they emit a warning sound. If you did not change the batteries in the fall, pull out your shopping list now and add the needed batteries to your list so you can change them the next time you go to the store.

Since the topic of carbon monoxide is being discussed, if you begin to feel dizzy while in your house, get outside and get fresh air. If you begin to feel better quickly once outside, call emergency services and get everyone out of the house. Remember, CO has no odor so proper use of detectors is key to surviving a CO leak in your house. You should also have your furnaces inspected each year for safety. The cost of a tune up and safety inspection is nothing compared to the loss of a loved one, simply contact any of the great heating companies in the area and ask if they do furnace safety inspections.

Fire safety is another big thing to go over.

First and foremost, running the furnace causes the air to become much drier in the winter months. If you have a whole house humidity control system, make sure that is working properly. If you use the portable humidifiers, keep them running per manufacturers instructions.

If you are a real tree family, make sure to keep the tree properly watered. Keep any kind of flame or heat source well away from the tree. That includes candles, space heaters, baseboard heaters, etcetera, and do not smoke near the tree. In fact, one of their tips is to smoke outside. Always turn your tree lights off when leaving the home or going to bed.

Check the safety features of your space heaters, make sure they work. Keep the space heaters away from items that could cover up the intake and block air flow. Make sure the space heaters are on a secure, flat surface so they cannot fall over and do not use them when no one is around to monitor them. Going to bed? Turn them off, leaving for the store? Turn them off.

These are just some of the tips that they have shared over the last few weeks. The impact tips are the videos they share. Watching how fast a Christmas tree becomes engulfed with flames and spreads to the surrounding furniture is downright frightening and needs to be watched.

Head on over to www. facebook.com/CGPS.fire and watch the videos they have shared. They are a great reminder of what can go wrong and how quickly even the tiniest of sparks can make a joyous holiday a nightmare. They want to help you avoid that nightmare with a little education and friendly reminders.