Evergy officials are calling on Kansas residents to keep safety in mind when they’re putting up indoor and outdoor lighting for the Christmas holidays.

The utility is warning of dangers that could result from the purchase of low-cost power strips and extension cords from discount shopping sites online.  The U.S. Fire Administration says about 24,000 electrical fires occur per year. Evergy reminds customers that decorations should all have labels from independent testing laboratories such as Underwriters Laboratories (UL), Canadian Standards Association (CSA) or Intertek (ETL). If they don’t, they haven’t been tested for safety and could be a fire hazard.

When residents have their lights in place, there are other safety tips to remember:

1. Inspect electrical decorations for damage: Discard them if there are cracked or damaged sockets, loose or bare wires, or loose connections.
2. Make sure holiday lights and decorations are properly rated for indoor or outdoor use: Only use indoor lights inside your home, and only use outdoor lights outside. Not all lights are built to handle winter weather.
3. Don’t overload outlets: Overloaded outlets are a common cause of fires. Only plug one power strip or one high-wattage appliance into each outlet at a time.
4. Don’t connect more than three strings of lights: This could blow a fuse and start a fire.
5. Use battery-operated candles: Almost half of all decoration fires are started by candles.
6. Protect your electrical cords from damage: Don’t pinch them through doorways, windows or under furniture. Don’t place them under rugs or near heat sources.
7. When you go to sleep, so should your decorations: Turn off, unplug, and extinguish all decorations when they aren’t attended. Unattended candles are the cause of one in five home candle fires. Half of home fire deaths occur between the hours of 11 p.m. and 7 a.m.

More information is available at the web site evergy.com/holidaysafety