Safety | Tips for Cold Weather

As the National Weather Service issued a freeze warning and frost advisory throughout Southern California until tomorrow morning, Southern Californians are doing their best to stay warm during this surprising cold spell. Here are some safety tips for cold weather:

• Candles, charcoal and any open flame indoors can pose a safety hazard. Make sure you are well prepared for an outage, especially if you rely on electric heat.
• Keep your children at least three feet from your furnace, fire place, wood stove or portable heater.
• Never use your oven to heat your home.
• If you are using space heaters, try to keep one room warm at a time. It’s safer and will help to keep your electric bill lower. Remember to turn your portable heater off when you leave a room or go to bed.
• Make sure your electric blanket is in good working condition and turn it off when you are not using it.
• Plug portable heaters directly into electrical wall outlets and do not use extension cords.
• Never use equipment designed for outdoor cooking and heating indoors because it releases toxic fumes.
• Check on elderly and medically fragile neighbors to make sure they are safe during an outage.

Information supplied by Southern California Edison one of the nation’s largest electric utilities, serving a population of nearly 14 million via 4.9 million customer accounts in a 50,000-square-mile service area within Central, Coastal and Southern California.