Religious, spiritual and cultural fire-related practices

Excerpted from Part 4: Special Issues - TAPP-C: Clinician’s Manual for Preventing and Treating Juvenile Fire Involvement.

Considerations

Many families may engage in fire-related activities associated with their religious, spiritual and/or cultural beliefs and practices. These activities may include burning candles, sweetgrass, incense or other materials on a regular basis and/or for long periods of time.

These activities increase a child’s risk for fire involvement because they require the availability of ignition sources, and the burning materials themselves may be used as ignition sources.

Moreover, families may not immediately view these activities as potentially risky, since they may have engaged in them for many years and/or many times without any difficulty. Caregivers may also mistakenly assume that children would never misuse something of great value or sacredness.

Fire is dangerous regardless of the meaning assigned to it and must be handled safely.

Intervention modifications

Religious, spiritual and/or cultural fire-related practices are important to consider in the intervention process. These practices should be viewed as positive uses of fire.

These activities provide opportunities for caregivers to model appropriate fire-related behaviours, particularly fire-safe behaviours. Caregivers can use these practices as opportunities to articulate the fire-safety measures they are taking, thereby modelling fire-safe attitudes and behaviour. As well, if the practices have positive fire-related teachings associated with them, these may be shared with children, if appropriate.

Caregivers should be encouraged to find out how to practise their activity in the safest way possible; for example, candles that will be burning for a long period of time need to be in sturdy, non-flammable candle holders in safe, stable locations. They may benefit from consulting with their local fire service professional about safe ways to conduct these fire-related activities.

Since access to fire materials is not likely to be completely eliminated in situations where fire is being used as part of religious, spiritual and/or cultural practices, supervision of the child becomes especially important.

Children should never be left unsupervised in the presence of burning materials. Children should, however, be encouraged to participate in religious and/or cultural fire-related practices with appropriate fire-safety measures and adult supervision in place.

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