Halloween is just around the corner and North Shore families are being reminded to take precautions to ensure a safe evening.
The City of North Vancouver and the North Vancouver City Fire Department warn that candle decorations and flowing costumes create a fire risk and offer some tips to avoid accidental blazes:
- When choosing a costume, stay away from billowing or long, trailing fabric. If making your own costume, choose material that won't easily ignite.
- Provide children with flashlights or glow sticks for lighting as part of their costume.
- Dried flowers, cornstalks and crepe paper are highly flammable. Keep these and other decorations well away from all open flames and heat sources, including light bulbs and heaters.
- Use battery-operated candles in jack-o-lanterns. If you use real candles, use extreme caution.
- If you choose to use candle decorations, keep them well attended at all times. Use flashlights as alternatives to candles or torch lights when decorating walkways and yards.
Meanwhile, BC Children’s Hospital is also offering some tips to prevent kids from sustaining Halloween-related injuries.
- Help kids choose costumes that fit properly, keep them warm and are bright, reflective and flame-resistant. Halloween drivers: watch for children at crosswalks and for trick-or-treaters darting into the road.
- Have a responsible adult accompany your children trick-or-treating. Don’t go to dark houses, and do not approach unfamiliar animals.
- Encourage young children to decorate with stickers on their Halloween pumpkins or draw on them and have an adult do the carving. Young children shouldn’t use knives or sharp tools.
- Check all treats before letting your children eat them. Wash and cut fruit, and remove smaller treats like hard candy, popcorn and nuts from young children to avoid choking.
- Know who your older kids are with and how they’re celebrating Halloween. Enforce a curfew, and make sure they have a fully-charged cell phone and a planned route or ride home.
Further, the CSA Group, a public safety and product testing and certification organization, reminds residents to take care when decorating the homes.
- When purchasing light strings, animatronics, strobe and black lights, fog machines or extension cords, look for a certification mark from an accredited certification organization.
- Use heavy-duty extension cords for high-wattage decorations such as fog machines and large electronically animated displays to avoid overheating and potential fires.
- Only use lights and electrical decorations outdoors if they are marked for “outdoor use.”
- Before working with outdoor wiring, turn off the electricity to the supply outlet and unplug the connection.
- Carefully inspect each electrical decoration. Cracked or frayed sockets, loose or bare wires, and loose connections may provide shock or fire hazard. If found, dispose of damaged light sets and replace damaged power cords.
- When hanging lights outdoors, keep electrical connectors above ground, out of water and away from metal eavestroughs. Connect outdoor lighting into receptacles protected by weatherproof ground fault circuit interrupters (GFCI), which can provide protection from electric shock by sensing ground leakage and cutting electrical power.
- Use insulated fasteners rather than metal nails or tacks to hold light strings in place to avoid damaging the wires and insulation.
The North Shore News reminds trick-or-treaters and party-goers to bring a camera when they head out this Halloween weekend. We want to see readers' scary costumes and haunted houses. Simply tag your photos with #NSNHalloween when you post them to Twitter or Instagram and they will appear on our website.
