Fire Hazards of Dry Versus Watered Christmas Trees

These experiments were designed to examine the difference in fire hazard between a dry Christmas tree and a watered Christmas tree for fire safety awareness. One dry tree (no water after harvesting) and one watered tree was tested with no replicates. The test specimens were approximately 2.1 m (7 ft.) tall Douglas fir trees cut fresh from a local Maryland tree farm approximately four weeks prior to testing. The watered tree was placed in a bucket of water within 3 hours of being harvested and a fresh cut was made approximately 50 mm (2 in.) from the base of the trunk prior to placement in the water. Both the dry tree and watered tree were stored indoors until the day of the test. For fire testing, each tree was placed in a mockup of a corner of a living room constructed to provide background for video recording and not to replicate a specific or typical living room. The ignition source was a book of matches with the match heads wrapped with a thin nickel-chromium wire that heats, igniting the matchbook, when electricity is applied. Three attempts were made to ignite the watered tree during which the ignition source and position of fuel adjacent to the ignition source were varied, however, no sustained ignition of the tree was achieved. For the dry tree, ignition of the tree was achieved on the first attempt and a peak heat release rate of 7362 kW was reached 31 s after ignition.