MOSES LAKE — Winter weather has come to the Pacific Northwest, which means a lot of people will be looking for ways to keep warm. Space heaters can be a useful, portable way to heat up a room, but you have to be careful with them and the fire risks they present.

“Maintain space between the heater and any combustible object: clothes, blankets, anything that could catch fire,” Moses Lake firefighter Seth Ellis advised.

On average, 1 in 6 residential fires is caused by heating equipment, according to the National Fire Prevention Association. Of those, about a third are caused by space heaters, but those fires result in 88 percent of civilian deaths and 80 percent of civilian injuries from heating-related fires. The number of fires caused by heaters has dropped from more than 70,000 annually

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