St Vincents is accepting donations of warm food, warm clothing, blankets and sleeping bags. If you are able to help or donate contact Warming Center Coordinator Joe Hutchinson at 208-699-7886.

With the Thanksgiving and Christmas Holidays coming, many people are anxiously looking forward to eating deep-fried turkey. As this is becoming a popular trend, it is also important to be aware of the safety concerns for this practice because; Many units easily tip over, spilling the five gallons of hot oil within the cooking pot.

If the cooking pot is overfilled with oil, the oil may spill out of the unit when the turkey is placed into the cooking pot. Oil may hit the burner/flames causing a fire at engulf the entire unit.

• Partially frozen turkeys placed into the fryer can cause a spillover effect. This too, may result in an extensive fire.

• With no thermostat controls, the units also have the potential to overheat the oil to the point of combustion.

• The sides of the cooking pot, lid and pot handles get dangerously hot, posing severe burn hazards.

The CDAFD is reminding everyone to change their batteries on all smoke detectors. It is strongly recommended that you check your detectors monthly, and change batteries twice a year. People use daylight savings as a reminder. So, Saturday night when you change your clocks back an hour, remember to change the batteries in your detectors.

Winter is here, bringing with it the need to heat our homes. With the change in season, The Coeur d’Alene Fire Department typically sees an increasing number of fires caused by wood heating. These fires range in severity from a small chimney fire to a large, well-involved building fire. The common theme is that these are preventable fires.