“Desperate times call for desperate measures.” The well-known saying should perhaps also highlight that the more desperate you are, the more mistakes you make. That is the view emerging as the impact of the UK’s energy crisis begins to be more fully understood. The ‘Heat or Eat’ dilemma blighting low-income households in the UK can also spark off the threat of heating-related fires due to hazardous experiments to keep warm.
Hunter Seymour reports on the impact rising energy costs are having, how it is likely to feed through to a growth in fire hazards as a result, and what the fire industry is doing to help combat the issue.
As the World Energy Council warns, the failure to protect those in fuel poverty could see a “cost of living crisis move to a cost of lives crisis” in the colder months in areas of high deprivation and social exclusion.
Critically, the LFB (London Fire Brigade) has issued an urgent safety warning for vigilance to safeguard “The Left Behind” in the Energy Crisis. Following a recent fire in southwest London as rising energy bills hit UK homes, fire Investigators determined that the cause of a significant house fire in New Malden involved an open fire being used instead of gas central heating.
DIY heat sources: The threat of dangerous alternatives
As the LFB cautions: “With over 100 fires involving open fires, log burners and heaters in just the last few months alone, the Brigade fears that costly energy bills could result in a surge of fires as people resort to alternative means to heat their homes.”
Improvised drying of washing is identified as a particular hazard. Clearly there is a public safety risk if fireguards are not in place. “Anything that can catch alight should be kept well away from the fire, such as logs and kindling which could be ignited by radiating heat.”
Such examples, however, are evidently not the only risky expedients in an energy crisis. According to the latest 2022 Home Office crime statistics, electricity theft – ‘hotwiring’ or tampering with a line or bypassing a meter – has risen by a record-breaking 13% compared with the previous year. Energy regulator Ofgem (The Office of Gas and Electricity Markets) warns that the offence of “interfering with electricity meters or wires is a serious risk to safety”.
“One in four UK households is now in fuel poverty, which means millions are facing impossible choices because of their high energy bills. Some are choosing between heating and eating, others are self-disconnecting from energy suppliers completely and some are even starting open fires. These aren’t coping strategies. It’s people who feel they have no safe choice to make.”
Illegal tampering to bypass meters could result in overheating of wires, property damage and possible loss of life. Seeking makeshift substitutes for powering lighting or cooking in the home is similarly fraught with inherent dangers that actively hasten fire-raising incidents. The increasing use of candles or paraffin lamps indoors is now regularly reported in the national press, together with accounts of significant growth in sales of “survival packs” of camping gear such as portable gas stoves.
Meanwhile, there is news of households using outdoor barbecue appliances instead of their kitchen ovens. Recently, a strengthening trend in wood-burning stoves has seen a 60% leap in sales of firewood.
Such trends point to a worsening step in the heating of homes by householders unfamiliar with the hazards. The fuel poverty charity, National Energy Action, describes fire incidents arising from improvised heating by open fires as a “harsh and dangerous reality of the cost-of-living crisis”.
The charity’s verdict is stark. “One in four UK households is now in fuel poverty, which means millions are facing impossible choices because of their high energy bills. Some are choosing between heating and eating, others are self-disconnecting from energy suppliers completely and some are even starting open fires. These aren’t coping strategies. It’s people who feel they have no safe choice to make.”
This verdict is echoed by the End Fuel Poverty Coalition: “There are more than 10,000 excess winter deaths per year because people cannot afford to heat their homes.”
The silent killer
The NFCC (National Fire Chiefs Council) points out the particular public safety risk of temporary portable heaters and urges people to take fire safety precautions in the home to stay safe. Some kinds of heaters may also present a poisoning risk from “the Silent Killer”, CO (carbon monoxide). The use in households of CO alarms is strongly advised. “Fires involving heaters have a particularly high mortality rate. This may be due to circumstances where bedding or blankets are too close to a heat source.”
Cost-saving electricity usage in off-peak night time hours can seem like budgetary good sense but it may lead to the running of high-energy white goods such as tumble dryers and washing machines whilst occupants sleep; a practice that could leave sleepers less time to respond quickly and safely in the event of fire.
Meter cheating
Improvised heating is also an observably emergent criminal activity. Every year innocent people are injured, some fatally, as a result of meter tampering. It’s estimated that more than £400 million worth of energy is stolen each year across the UK, a crime reckoned to add between £20 and £30 to the bill of every honest household.
The UKRPA (UK Revenue Protection Association) is committed to combating the tampering and illegal abstraction of electricity and gas. This year the UKRPA reported an increase in criminals selling meter tampering or meter removal as a service. And it is so often the innocent who are the victims.
For example, the electricity meter of an Essex pub was bypassed in 2018. A small child was fatally electrocuted from touching lighting in the garden, and both the electrician and landlord were prosecuted. Ofgem warns: “Under no circumstances should consumers attempt to connect electricity meters themselves.”
According to news reports, in many cases criminal gangs can carry out in excess of 15 “tapping-in” bypasses of domestic supplies each day. For instance, in one single terraced street of 20 houses, where a house was destroyed in a suspected gas explosion, investigators found five instances of gas theft and two of electricity theft.
The scale of the destruction meant the cause of the explosion could not be identified but this example demonstrates the wide prevalence of this life-threatening malpractice with, allegedly, UK homes in incalculable numbers avoiding paying for usage by bypassing their supply.
The two principal utilities, gas and electricity, are each individually sources of unique danger when subjected to tampering – but together they can combine in an explosive mixture with unforeseen fatal consequences. Leaking gas is highly flammable and can be easily ignited. A faulty electrical connection as the result of “hot-wiring” is all it would take to cause an explosion, risking terrible injuries. Meddling with exposed wiring can make switches or appliances “live” to touch or cause them to overheat or malfunction; the outcomes can be catastrophic.