Safety Tips: Keeping your home warm while preventing a fire

HATTIESBURG, Miss. - Forecasters are predicting below freezing temperatures for nearly every night this week. Assistant Fire Chief of Hattiesburg, Danny Wade, said there are plenty of ways to keep your home warm, safely.

"If you do have the space heaters or the electric heaters that you may purchase at one of the retail stores...you want to make sure everything around it’s clear,” said Wade. Space heaters should be clear of clothes, carpets and pets.

In case something happens, officials say it's best to make sure your smoke detectors are working properly before a fire breaks out.

There's an easy way to make sure your detectors are up-to-date with functional batteries,“We tell you to treat your smoke detectors like a birthday. Every time you have a birthday give your smoke detector a birthday by changing their batteries,” Test the detectors’ batteries by pressing the button to sound the alarm.

Firefighters are located throughout the Hub City with a maximum response time of two minutes to any incident.