As acronyms go, NESM isn’t one that rolls easily off the tongues of home owners — or for that matter, everybody — but perhaps it should. Because National Electrical Safety Month can prevent injuries or even save lives, in addition to damage to your home.
NESM comes and goes every May. Designated by the Electrical Safety Foundation International, its purpose is to educate North Americans “about the steps that can be taken in order to reduce the number of electrically related fires, fatalities, injuries, and property loss.” And each year there are more resources to facilitate electrical safety awareness.
It also addresses the part that emerging technologies such as electric vehicles, smart devices and solar energy play in everyone’s “energy grid” and the safety procedures that come with them…such as having only qualified personnel connect and properly maintaining everything electrical in your home.
That’s probably as important as any safety measure that can be taken. An estimate in a National Post story estimated that electrical fires are 20 per cent of all fires in Canada, and that every year 2,000 Canadian children are injured, or worse, from putting foreign items into electrical outlets. There are receptacles that can be installed which go a long way to prevent such injuries.
Faulty electrical equipment is another source of electrical fires. The good news is that the number of fatal electrical fires, internationally, dropped by 24 per cent from 2019 to 2020.
May is the month that’s supposed to get everyone’s attention about electrical safety. Yet NESM is a wise acronym for any month.