Did Your Home Pass the Holiday Safety Test?
The 2023 holiday season is now behind us. As we embark on a new year, it is a good time to assess home security and improve it over the coming months. Reflecting on the past year is a good idea for doing so effectively. More specifically, how did your home perform during the holiday season? Did it pass the annual holiday safety test?
There is no official test for holiday home safety. But if you are like me, you are familiar with everything the experts tend to discuss in the months leading up to the holidays. They discuss fire safety, preventing home burglary, and being wary of winter weather that could cause household accidents.
Recapping how your home performed over the last several months can provide valuable insights into how you can approve home safety for the coming year. So, let’s review. We will start with the prospect of home burglary.
A Lucrative Time for Property Crimes
The holiday season is a lucrative time for certain types of property crimes. Home and car burglaries are at the top of the list. Burglars are smart enough to know that people spend a lot of money during the last three months of the year. They also know that big-ticket items are on the list for many holiday shoppers.
Here’s hoping that neither your home nor your car was burglarized in recent months. If that’s the case, do you think it was a mere chance, or have you taken steps to prevent burglary? That is the big question.
If a burglar suspects you have the right kinds of items in your home, there is sufficient motivation to at least consider breaking in. But you can put a damper on any such decision by installing a monitored home security system and heavy-duty door locks.
Some Cities Are More Prone Than Others
As long as we talk about home and car burglary, you might be interested to know that some cities are more prone to such crimes than others. Vivint Smart Home recently analyzed data from 182 American cities to determine which ones have the highest risks of holiday property crimes. Here are the top five:
- Tacoma, WA
- St. Louis, MO
- Las Vegas, NV
- Memphis, TN
- Spokane, WA
Whether you live in one of these five cities or not, the local crime rate probably had something to do with whether or not burglars attempted to hit your house during the holidays. Homeowners in areas with higher rates of property crimes are more motivated to install home security systems and take other measures.
Porch Piracy During the Holidays
Another highly lucrative crime during the holiday season is porch piracy. Once again, I hope you weren’t victimized. But if you were, could you have done anything to prevent it? Perhaps. Only you know the circumstances surrounding what happened to you.
Porch pirates have never victimized me. Yet I read plenty of news stories about it. The local station reports yet another porch piracy crime every few days. One case in particular made me laugh when I first read it.
A woman in a neighboring town decided to help herself to packages by following an Amazon delivery truck and quickly scarfing up what was left behind. What was funny about it? She had no plans to sell what she stole online or on the street. Rather, she was planning to give the stolen goods as Christmas gifts. She found a novel way to shop for friends and family.
One of the best defenses against porch piracy is video surveillance. Whether it is a video camera mounted on the exterior of your house or a video doorbell with onboard audio, video surveillance provides evidence. It provided the evidence necessary to catch the woman I referenced earlier.
Fires and Carbon Monoxide Leaks
We often discuss home security issues, such as burglaries and home invasions. However, it is equally important to protect yourself and your family in case of fires or carbon monoxide leaks. Fire and carbon monoxide are often referred to as silent killers because they can do their dirty work without victims having any clue.
The fire itself is pretty easy to identify. But the real problem with house fires is smoke. A victim can be overcome by smoke long before the flames reach her. And if a fire breaks out overnight, a sleeping victim could be overcome by smoke without waking up.
Carbon monoxide is even more deadly because it is both colorless and odorless. You cannot see or smell it. Furthermore, the symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning are very similar to flu symptoms. A person can be overcome by carbon monoxide and not realize there is a problem until it is too late.
Detectors In Your Home
This leads to an important question: Is your home equipped with smoke alarms and CO detectors? It is a good idea to have at least one smoke alarm in the general vicinity of the kitchen and another near the bedrooms. If you have multiple bedrooms on multiple floors or at opposite ends of the house, each bedroom area should have its own smoke alarm.
CO detectors should also be installed near bedrooms. One per floor is usually sufficient. A detector should never be installed near a furnace, fireplace, or gas stove.
If your home passes the holiday safety test, is it because you have prioritized home security or just because you lucked out and didn’t face any real risks? Take the next couple of weeks to assess how your home performed. If you find security holes, start working on patching them up. Make your home safer so that next year’s holiday season does not resemble the proverbial lump of coal.
