Taguig fire chief offers holiday safety tips

REPLACE burnt-out bulbs. Turn off LED lights and those with fused plugs before going to bed.

These were some of the safety tips given on Tuesday by the officer in charge of the Taguig Fire Department for the holidays.

Chief Insp. Junito Maslang said people should also decide where to place Christmas lights —whether indoors or outdoors—based on the product information.

“We should also choose (Department of Trade and Industry) certified lights, and these should have commodity clearance or an ICC sticker,” he said, noting that the full name and address of the product’s importer or distributor should also be specified in the package “to ensure the quality of the Christmas lights.”

According to Maslang, when putting the lights on display,  there should be no “exposed wiring.”

He said that the month of December “usually registers a high number of fire cases mostly caused by malfunctioning or overheating Christmas lights,” among others.  Kristine Felisse Mangunay