Be Careful with portable heaters this winter season, they can cause fires

Thank goodness no house fires, but my 8 year old knocked a spongbob pillow-like doll off her bed and it touched the heater and started smoking. Needless to say, I took the heater out of her room. Glad nothing bad happened to your loved ones.

yup we wnent camping never left any thing on in the house But we came back early for it rained so much was flooding us our only to find our house burnt to the ground. The inspectors said it came from the tv electrical outlet. As I guess thats where they found that the fire started. Wha t was sacry for my neighbor is she thought my son was in there. and someone broke the door in to check she didnt know he was with us.

We have one portable electric heater that we use here in the house. We only have it on when we are in the same room with it and can watch and see it. I keep my heater away from anything that could catch fire and I turn it off when we go to bed. I do not personally know of anyone it has happened to but I know I have seen reports of it on the news.

[i]Hi winterose, ohhh...Glad to hear everyone is safe! When I was in College and renting, we have a neighbor who light a candle and left it and falls asleep! They have a wood house and it started the fire, good thing, a lot of people were able to notice and hear them so they were saved but they lost all their stuff inside the house....The house was destroyed al[/i]so!

Oh Winterose, that was a tradegy averted, thank God the mother woke in time before it became out of control. Unfortunately I have been caught up in a house fire which was caused by an electrical fault on a cooker, luckily no one was seriously hurt, a broken ankle from the one child we couldn't get upstairs to get who jumped and smoke inhalation. I was visiting a friend with my two daughters, she had five children and there were two round playing and the kitchen was at the front so we had to get the kids through the flames onto the balacony as we were 3rd and fourth floor and then try to get her eldest daughter, luckily she was gymnastic and jumped from the fourth floor to a third floor balcony and got out through a neighbours. Very frightening and has made me very aware of the dangers and have smoke detectors everywhere. I was taken to hospital on a double oxygen mask with one on her babies and we were the first major incident at a new section of hospital. Huggles. Ellie :D

Hi Carol, I have a space heater in my office and always turn it off when I leave the room or at night when I go to bed. Unfortunately, my hubby isn't real good about turning off his in his office. I have to squabble with him sometimes to turn the darn thing off when he goes to bed. grrrr Besides the chance of a fire, it just makes the heating bill go up which we really can't afford happening. Happy MyLotting! Char

Wow!! This was a close call indeed, and glad to see no one was hurt. Looks like God was protecting them for sure. I have been in one Fire before, but luckily was out of town when it happened. Over 13 yrs. ago I was renting an apt. that ended up catching on Fire, and lost quite a few things to smoke and water damage, but since no lives were lost, that was a good thing. Funny thing was ours ended up being Arson but I never did find out who did it either.

I will run them when I am home and awake, but they go off when I go to sleep. I know alot of people are heating with them instead of gas though. We did have a fire in our house, but not due to a heater. I had a very old exhaust fan in the wall, that was never used. We did not even know there was electric to it, as the landlord had the hole stuffed with rags. One night I woke up and smelled like wood burning, I woke my husband up and he told me that he did not smell anything. I layed there another 5 minutes and looked out the window and could see little puffs of smoke. I went downstairs in the kitchen and through the house. I looked out the windows, nothing. I opened the basement door and the basement had smoke. I got all my family up while dialing 911. They came and could smell smoke but could not find anything. They finally took down a panel of our drop ceiling and there was smoke and burning embers on the top of the panel. The fan had shorted out and the smoke traveled down the wall to the basement, and the wind blew hot embers into the insulation in the ceiling. The rafters were golden brown, but had not turned into flames. The smoke detecters did not go off because everything was trapped. It terrified me to think of what could have been. I am glad everyone in your case was ok. It just scares the heck out of you.

I remember many years ago when we relied on a space heater for warmth. My husband connected it to an extension cord. The cord got very hot. When he tried to unplug he found the plug was so hot that it had melted into the extension cord! I flipped. He said I was overreacting.

I haven't had a house fire, but my niece did. Her situation wasn't because of a heater though. Growing up we had wood stoves, mainly because my mom didn't want to deal with the fire place, our house wasn't wired for central heat or air. My mom didn't have electric heaters, she had the ones that you had to use a certain type of oil for it. Right before she went to bed, she would go through the house and made sure they were all put out. She was always scared that we would forget or accidently knock it over and catch the house on fire. My parents home has been around since the 30's, and it has survived a lot for one of her kids to burn it down. Those heaters came in handy, when we had ice storms and it knocked out the power for a week. Wood stoves especially, since we could cook certain foods on top of it. Thank goodness, your boyfriends mother woke up. Angels were watching over their family that night.

these things are dangerous letting off some dangerous fumes.many have lost their life because of these heaters because you have no vents to let those fumes out.especially not good for people who has ashma at all.

One of my friends is a fire fighter so I hear all kinds of stories about fires breaking out, as well as other aweful stories. My mom has always had space heaters and she did have one catch on fire. It burned a hole in her rug, but luckily she was in the room at the time and was able to put the fire out quickly before it became a huge problem. She still has one to this though, she also has a new carpet.

I have heard of terrible happenings in my area because of space heaters. They are nice to have and I was glad to see that alot of them have the automatic shut off on the newer models now too.

I haven't had a house fire but one of neighbors did. She had one of these kerosene heaters. When they first come out they were popular. She was trying to fill it with kerosene with out shutting off the heater. The kerosene waste on the floor and caught fire. It was in the hallway, and the children got out the house through the windows and come to my house and told me to call the fire department. She was inside trying to put the fire out. The firemen got there and told her to come out of the house. They put the fire out but it had a lot of damage done to the house. She moved after that.