January 3rd, 2010 
Alexander Stevens 
Traditional fireplaces are great: they create a sense of cozy comfort in the room, create light and heat, and make your room look great. They also house a fire, a very destructive element if left unchecked. Unfortunately unsafe fireplace operation leads to chimney fires which could spread quickly to the rest of the house. Therefore, if you have a fireplace, knowing how to operate it safely is extremely important. Fortunately, proper fireplace safety techniques, while imperative to follow exactly, are relatively simple at heart.
The most important part of fireplace safety is keeping the chimney clean and safe of obstruction. Clogged or otherwise obstructed and rarely cleaned chimneys are the cause of most fireplace related accidents. When wood is burned, and especially when wood is burned incompletely, creosote, a highly combustible residue, and forms on chimney walls and poses a serious safety hazard. Unfortunately, because the amount of creosote formed on chimney walls depends entirely on the type of wood, its moisture and the oxygen available, there is no way to predict how much is attributed to a single internal of fireplace operation. This makes it hard to predict when or how often to clean your chimney, so you would be wise to do it sooner rather then later, and as often as possible. This prevents the vast majority of fireplace related blazes, and the money spent on chimney cleaning services, or the tools and time it takes to do it yourself, is well worth your safety and peace of mind.
A more obvious part of safe fireplace operation is keeping the flame contained, and highly combustible substances outside away from it. A stray spark may escape at any time and land on any easily flammable substance nearby. Though it is rare to see serious fires started by small sparks escaping the fireplace, it has been known to happen; given how easily preventable this occurrence is, you are advised to keep anything combustible two or more feet away from the open flame. This distance varies depending on the size and containment of the flame in your fireplace, so use your own judgment when determining minimum safe distance, or better yet keep the more highly flammable substances out of the room altogether.
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