Halloween Safety Tips
KINGSPORT – Halloween is a fun, and spooky, time of year for kids. The Kingsport Fire Department and the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) want to make trick-or-treating safe for your little monsters with a few easy safety tips.
Halloween Trick-or-Treating Safety Tips:
Children should always go trick-or-treating with a responsible adult.
If you are not going trick-or-treating with your children, make sure you know what streets they will be visiting.
Provide a cell phone so they can check in with you.
Provide children with flashlights to carry or use glow sticks as part of their costume.
Remind children to stay together as a group and walk from house to house.
Make trick-or-treating a no running game so they will not fall ‚ while having fun.
Review how to cross a street with your child. Look left, right and left again to be sure no cars are approaching before crossing the street.
Decide the time your children will go out trick-or-treating and what time they will return home.
Make a rule that children will not eat any treat until it has been brought home and examined by a grown-up.
Halloween Fire Safety:
When choosing a costume, stay away from billowing or long trailing fabric. If your child is wearing a mask, make sure the eye holes are large enough so they can see out.
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.
It is safest to use a flashlight or battery-operated candle in a jack-o-lantern. If you use a real candle, use extreme caution. Make sure children are watched at all times when candles are lit.
When lighting candles inside jack-o-lanterns, use long, fireplace style matches or a utility lighter.
Be sure to place lit pumpkins well away from anything that can burn and far enough out of way of trick-or-treaters, doorsteps, walkways and yards.
Remember to keep exits clear of decorations, so nothing blocks escape routes.
Tell children to stay away from open flames.
Be sure they know how to stop, drop and roll if their clothing catches fire. (Have them practice, stopping immediately, dropping to the ground, covering their face with hands, and rolling over and over to put the flames out.)
Use battery operated lights as alternatives to candles or torch lights when decorating walkways and yards. They are much safer for trick-or-treaters, whose costumes may brush against the lighting.
If your children are going to Halloween parties at others homes, have them look for ways out of the home and plan how they would get out in an emergency.
Source www.nfpa.org/education & www.sparky.org
