What you can to do to prevent a dryer fire could save your life

(WXYZ) - An appliance you depend on everyday in your home could be a fire hazard. There are some 13-thousand dryer fires a year in this country and many are caused by lint buildup.

Gena Brown was a devoted single mother of two girls. When fire broke out at her home he screamed for the girls to get out. They escaped through a bedroom window.
Kenneth Larkin will never forget the phone call he got.

“A frantic phone call from a neighbor indicating that Gena’s two daughters Kendall and Jordan, were at their house and there was a fire,” says Larkin.

When he got to the house, he realized Gena was still inside.

“It hit me like a ton of bricks that she was in serious trouble is she was not out of the house,” says Larkin.

Gena never made it out. The fire that killed her started in a dryer vent.

It restricts the air flow and makes the drier run hot because you can’t get rid of the heat in the drum and it backs up and it causes lint particles to get on the heating element or gas burner assembly and then it can ignite.

If you think it couldn’t happen to you because you clean your lint trap regularly, think again. Lint can build up in the venting system.

Some dryers are touting a new feature. LG calls it Flow Sense and on Kenmore machines, it’s a check vent indicator. The manufacturer says these will sense if a dryer’s vent is blocked. While both companies say this will improve performance neither is calling it a safety feature. Our partners at Consumer Reports tested to see if it would alert you to a blocked dryer vent.

They blocked the vent completely and then ran a full load of wet clothes. The results were inconsistent. The four orange flow sense bars show that the vent is blocked. But other times, there’s no signal at all, and the dryer continues to run with a completely blocked vent for more than hour…

Your best protection, as JoAnne Purtan has shown you before, is to be proactive. You can find dryer lint cleaning kits with different size brushes. John Sowden is with www.repairclinic.com . We started at the lint trap.

Then we moved to the back. Once you disconnect the venting system use a long brush, Sowden advises.

“These are made to go into the vent, at times you have to worth with it to get it to make the corners, all the way up, there’s a little dust in here, but I’ve seen much worse,” says Sowden, as he works on a dryer vent.

Besides regularly cleaning the lint trap, put some drops of water on it, make sure the water goes through. Dryer sheets can clog up the vent.

Other tips:
1. Use metal dryer ducts if possible. Consumer Reports say flexible dryer ducts made of foil or plastic are the most problematic because they can sag and let lint build up at low points.

2. Clean inside, behind and underneath the dryer.

3. Since I found this mess behind my dryer a couple years ago, I keep a close eye on it now.

There’s also a new device being sold called Lint Alert . It plugs in and attaches to your venting system and promises to alert you if lint is building up. Even with that safeguard in place or a dryer that may alert you. Nothing takes the place of getting a little dirty Now, to prevent a possible tragedy from hitting home.

Also be sure to check where the dryer vents to the outside of you your house to make sure it’s not blocked there too. Look for dryer venting kits at your local hardware stores or at sites like www.repairclinic.com or amazon.com .

Click here for more information about dryer fires from our partners at Consumer Reports.