Electricity safety in your home

How many electrical fires are there in Massachusetts?

In the past five years there is over 2,700 electrical fires resulting in 31 deaths. That makes electrical fires the second leading cause of fire fatalities in Massachusetts. They are expensive, too. Each electrical fire normally does an excess of $40,000 worth of damage to one home.

An air conditioner started a fire when it was connected to an extension chord that was undersized with the air conditioner. Try to think electricity running through wires. Water running through a garden hose. If you try to put too much water through the garden hose, it will burst. It will fail. Same thing are electrical wires. Every electrical component in your home is designed to handle so much electricity. If you try to put more electricity through that, then it is designed, it will fail.

Electricity normally running through wires creates a certain amount of heat. If you try to put too much electricity through a particular wire or electrical component, it will overheat that electrical wire and fail and start a fire.

For example, a typical home extension cord where we have had a couple of items plugged into it. We tried to exceed the rating of the extension cord. We used too much electricity. In other words, we tried to put too much water through the hose. The end result was that it failed.