Cold weather brings safety hazards: Overstrained boilers or electrical cords, gas leaks from cracking pipes, fires started by flammables left too close to heaters or stoves.

“It’s been very busy,” said Terry Ahlers, acting fire chief for the City of Newburgh. “This is the kind of weather that we dread, because we know we’re going to get busy.”

When there’s a fire in these bitter conditions, firefighters may be outside for hours at a stretch.

“We can’t stop and give up and come back (inside) and get warm,” Ahlers said.

The past few days have seen several local fires: a house destroyed in the White Sulphur Springs fire district near Swan Lake, a cabin burned just outside Port Jervis, a house damaged in Middletown.

“There’s so much fire hazard when we get a cold snap like this,” Ahlers said.

There are also other hazards: gas odors from cracked lines, carbon monoxide emergencies triggered when people try to heat their homes with kitchen stoves or kerosene heaters, fires when they try to thaw frozen water pipes with propane torches.

Middletown Fire Chief Sam Barone said people also leave towels or clothes on wood stoves or heaters, or they put heaters too close to curtains or other flammables. Sometimes they use electrical heaters with extension cords that can’t handle the power draw.

The weather is hazardous for firefighters, too, because they’re exposed to the elements.

“Our stuff isn’t designed to protect us from cold. It’s designed to protect us from hot,” Ahlers said.

The same goes for equipment.

“The boys went to a house fire on Christmas day. Pretty frigid,” Ahlers said. “The hose lines, as soon as you stop using them, they freeze up. You have to keep them trickling.”

Barone said that at the Wednesday morning fire on Horton Avenue, he had to call in help, in the form of salt, from the city Public Works Department.

“We had water on the street, under the truck,” Barone said. “You’ve got people slipping.”

Firefighters working inside the burning building start to sweat. “They come out, they’re all wet. Then their gear freezes,” Barone said.

Newer fire trucks have heated cabins big enough to hold five or six firefighters in full turnout gear, so they can warm up in shifts, Barone said.

The cold, Ahlers said, “takes its toll on everything and everybody.”

hyakin@th-record.com