PEORIA, Ill. – In the wake of fire damaging a chimney in Peoria’s East Bluff from the past weekend, the head of Peoria’s Fire Department is offering advice to prevent a similar fate from occurring in other homes.
Fire Chief Shawn Sollberger says his department does receive a good amount of calls this time of year to put out fires in chimneys.
“A lot of times what happens is that we have built up soot or creo-soot over time, and they haven’t cleaned them properly. And they fire those things up for the first time of the year, and it causes unfortunate incidents like this,” Sollberger said.
Sollberger is suggesting people maintain their chimneys just as often as they maintain their furnace, along with when they do it.
“It’s just one of those things that you forget about,” Sollberger said. “And it’s just a good reminder that however you want to do it within your own home, that either at the start of the season, which is probably be what we would recommend, that you have that cleaned before you have that fired up, or at the end of the season.”
Sollberger says while people can buy chimney cleaning kits at local hardware stores, he suggests professionals do the job. He says that’s due to them potentially finding problems that a homeowner might not discover.
