Electrical Fire Safety

A Factsheet on Home Electrical Fire Prevention

Electrical fires in our homes claim the lives of 310 Americans each year and injure 1,100 more. Some of these fires are caused by electrical system failures, but many more are caused by incorrectly installed wiring and overloaded circuits and extension cords.
The United States Fire Administration (USFA) would like consumers to know that there are simple steps you can take to prevent the loss of life and property resulting from electrical fires.

The Problem     

During a typical year, home electrical problems account for 28,600 fires and $1.1 billion in property losses. 53% of residential electrical fires involve electrical wiring.
December and January are the most dangerous months for electrical fires. Fire deaths are highest in winter months which call for more indoor activities and increases in lighting, heating, and appliance use. The bedroom is the leading area of fire origin for residential building electrical fires. However, electrical fires that begin in the living room/family room/den areas result in the most deaths.

The Cause

• Most electrical distribution fires result from problems with "fixed wiring" such as faulty electrical outlets and old wiring. Problems with cords (such as extension and appliance cords), plugs, receptacles, and switches also cause many home electrical fires.
• Light fixtures and lamps/light bulbs are also leading causes of electrical fires.
• Many avoidable electrical fires can be traced to misuse of electric cords, such as overloading circuits, poor maintenance, and running the cords under rugs or in high traffic areas.

Safety Precautions        

• Routinely check your electrical appliances and wiring.
• Frayed wires can cause fires. Replace all worn, old or damaged appliance cords immediately.
• Replace any electrical tool if it causes even small electrical shocks, overheats, shorts out, or gives off smoke or sparks.
• Keep electrical appliances away from wet floors and counters; pay special care to electrical appliances in the bathroom and kitchen.
• Buy electrical products evaluated by a nationally recognized laboratory, such as Underwriters Laboratories (UL).
• Keep clothes, curtains, and other potentially combustible items at least three feet from all heaters.
• If an appliance has a three-prong plug, use it only in a three-slot outlet. Never force it to fit into a two-slot outlet or extension cord.
• Don't allow children to play with or around electrical appliances like space heaters, irons, and hair dryers.
• Use safety closures to "child-proof" electrical outlets.
• Use electrical extension cords wisely; never overload extension cords or wall sockets.
• Immediately shut off, then professionally replace, light switches that are hot to the touch and lights that flicker.

Finally, having a working smoke alarm dramatically increases your chances of surviving a fire. And remember to practice a home escape plan frequently with your family.

House Wiring

Wiring, or what we call building wiring, is the process of providing power to buildings and structures. Conductors carry electricity, and wiring makes this power available for public use. National and local regulations in a locality have a check on installation of wiring procedures. In some countries a single national body is in charge of electrical installations and safety codes, while in some countries a national technical standard body produces a model electrical code, which is then adopted by the state, city or provincial regulations with slight changes as per their requirements.

House Wiring Methods

The function of wiring safety codes is to give technical, performance and material standards that would allow proper use of the electrical energy. Other preventions that are regulated are electric shock, fire or explosion. Materials required for wiring a building depend on factors like rating of the circuit, type of occupancy of the building, type of electrical system, national and local regulations and conditions in which the wiring must operate. Earlier methods of wiring were single cloth- insulated copper conductors running in interior walls. Another method was re-using of existing gas pipes for electric lighting. Then came Modern nonmetallic-sheathed cables (NMC), consisting of two to four thermoplastic insulated wires and a bare wire for grounding surrounded by a flexible plastic jacket. In industries, conductor bars are assembled with insulators in grounded enclosures. For heavy currents, bus bars are used. A live conductor of this type is a rigid piece of copper or aluminum usually in flat bars. Open bus bars are also used in manufacturing plants and power company switchyards. Such a bus set up can provide up to 50,000 amperes and up to hundreds of kilovolts. Much advancement is being made in wiring methods. The use of this scheme is the ability to remove/add a branch circuit without removing voltage from the whole segment. A fault in any phase jumps to the ground. Some common wiring tools are Lineman's pliers, Needle-nose pliers, wire strippers cable cutters rotosplit multimeter screwdrivers, crimpers, hammers, reciprocating saws, drywall saws, metal punches, flashlights, chisels and adjustable pliers.

 

The Godfather by Mario Puzo

Ok, now that we’re finally done with the Chuck Palahniuk special, let’s now move on to yet another brilliant writer of recent history.

Mario Puzo, the illustrious author of The Godfather perhaps made his name immortal when he first came out with his avant-garde style of writing, and his keen understanding of the life of a gangster has won him millions of male readers. His narrations were very poignant and real, than even Hollywood director Francis Ford Coppola was enamored with the life of Michael Corleone. When the movie version of the book came out, Mario Puzo and his “family” philosophy became legendary and made Al Pacino, Marlon Brando and Michael Caine certified superstars. The rest, as they say, is history.

So now, to start off our Puzo collection series, here’s The Godfather.

About the Author:

Lifelong New Yorker Mario Puzo drew upon figures in his Italian-American family to create the characters in his smash hit The Godfather in 1969; but he claimed never to have met a real-life mobster, and his detailed portrait of the Mafia world came entirely from diligent research.

BOOK INFORMATION:
Title: The Godfather

Author: Mario Puzo

Published: September 1983

ISBN-13: 9780451167712

Publisher: Penguin Group (USA)
Synopsis:

A #1 New York Times bestseller.

A classic American crime novel.

An offer you can’t refuse…

Since its first publication in 1969, Mario Puzo’s epic The Godfather has earned a permanent place in the American psyche and culture. In this story of family, loyalty, and the men who rule the American underworld, Puzo introduced a cast of singularly crafted characters, and offered an unforgettable look into the world of organized crime no writer has been able to duplicate since.

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The Zahir: A Novel of Obsession by Paulo Coelho

Here is another book of Paulo Coelho that will inspire us and give us learnings after we have read the book. It is definitely a must-read book because it has a unique story that will surely touch your life in the end leaving you with enough reason to believe in who you really are and what you were meant to be.

BOOK INFORMATION:
Title: The Zahir: A Novel of Obsession

Author: Paulo Coelho

Published: August 2005

ISBN-13: 978-0060825218

Publisher: HarperCollins
From Publishers Weekly:

The press chat cites 65 million copies of Coelho’s eight previous novels in print, making the Brazilian author one of the world’s bestselling novelists (150 countries and 56 languages). This book, whose title means “the present” or “unable to go unnoticed” in Arabic, has an initial staggered laydown of eight million copies in 83 countries and 42 languages. It centers on the narrator’s search for his missing wife, Esther, a journalist who fled Iraq in the runup to the present war, only to disappear from Paris; the narrator, a writer, is freed from suspicion when his lover, Marie, comes forward with a (true) alibi. He seeks out Mikhail, the man who may be Esther’s most recent lover and with whom she was last seen, who has abandoned his native Kazakhstan for a kind of speaking tour on love. Mikhail introduces the narrator to a global underground “tribe” of spiritual seekers who resist, somewhat vaguely, conventional ways of living. Through the narrator’s journey from Paris to Kazakhstan, Coelho explores various meanings of love and life, but the impact of these lessons is diminished significantly as they are repeated in various forms by various characters. Then again, 65 million readers can’t be wrong; the spare, propulsive style that drove The Alchemist, Eleven Minutes and Coelho’s other books will easily carry fans through myriad iterations of the ways and means of amor.

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