According to the Electrical Safety Foundation, electrical hazards kill 400 to 500 Americans and injure thousands more every year. Contact with overhead or downed power lines is a leading cause of these deaths and injuries, and the Foundation notes that the risks are especially acute during storms, which can bring down power lines. Case in point last year, when a Florida power line downed by Hurricane Idalia killed an Alachua County man.

Do you protect your Tallahassee-area home’s appliances and electronic devices with a surge protector? Did you know that electrical power surges are the leading cause of damage to electronic devices and equipment in homes and businesses? Does your home have a whole-house surge protector? Do you know the difference between a power strip and a surge protector?

Hurricane Idalia walloped the Tallahassee region last year with Category three winds, knocking out electrical power to more than 50,000 area households, in some cases, for days. In the wake of those power outages, portable and whole-home backup generator sales boomed, and more Tallahassee-area residents now have emergency generators than ever before.

You probably don’t give much thought to the lighting in your Tallahassee home during the course of a day. That is unless it fails to come on when you flick its switch. In that case, you probably search for a new light bulb to replace the burnt-out one. However, are you replacing it with an LED (light-emitting diode) bulb?

Tallahassee-area residents pay some of the lowest electric rates in Florida. While the state’s average residential price per kilowatt hour (kWh) is 15.24 cents, most Tallahassee households are billed at a 12.34 cents per kWh rate. However, those cents add up, and during these inflationary times, most people are receptive to hearing new cost-cutting tips.

If you periodically review the Tallahassee Fire Department’s (TFD) public safety news releases, you’ll often find that when a report details its response to a structural fire, the cause “often appears to be electrical.” A case in point being its January 16th response to two fires within 12 hours, with the cause of both cited as appearing to be electrical.