Teton County has joined with the state Fire Marshal’s office to urge users of oxygen for medical purposes to acquire a recent technology which makes their oxygen source more fire safe. Teton County Fire Marshal Kathy Clay explains that a “thermal fuse” is installed on the canula and automatically shuts off the flow of oxygen when it detects undue heat.
“If, for example there was a fire. Let’s say the home medical oxygen user brushed the hose across a gas burner, and that started a fire Oxygen makes fire a lot worse; so, what we want to do is shut down that flow of oxygen from the machine as quickly as we can.”
Clay says statistics gathered by the Wyoming Fire Marshal’s office revealed an alarming number of civilian casualties from fires in the state were people in their homes where medical oxygen was in use. She adds that the technology has been available for some time already.
“We pushed it really hard and didn’t get a lot of response – and then COVID hit. And we recognize that people were pretty fearful of people coming to visit but we will send vaccinated only people in masks to do these installations”
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