Holiday Safety Stuff: Halloween Hijinks

In the first episode of our Holiday Safety Stuff series, we're diving into all the tricks (and a few treats) to keep your Halloween hijinks safe and fun! Jimmy and Megan tackle everything from setting up spooky decorations to staying visible while trick-or-treating. They've got some hilarious stories, surprising stats, and a few eyebrow-raising moments that will make you rethink crossing the street outside the crosswalk.

Tune in to hear about common hazards you probably haven’t thought of, the unexpected risks of "human decorations” (aka. costumes), and a little-known project that helps trick-or-treaters with allergies feel comfortable and safe. Whether you’re braving haunted houses, roaming the neighborhood, or climbing ladders to hang spiders and cobwebs, we’ve got tips to keep your Halloween full of frights but safe from any actual danger.

Don’t let the ghouls and goblins catch you off guard! It’s all treats, no tricks in this safety-packed Halloween episode. 

Life Safety Associates specializes in emergency response training for corporate ERT Teams. We help businesses create competent and confident first responders who are ready to handle unexpected emergencies. For more information you find us @lifesafetyassoc or email@lifesafety.com.

Transcript

Jimmy: 0:23

What's happening. It's your boy, jimmy. Along with Meg's another life and safety podcast, today we're going to start our series of holiday safety briefs. We'll call it yeah yeah, holiday safety stuff. That's better. So today we'll obviously start with since it's October, we're going to start with Halloween safety stuff. So I'm going to start with the obvious.

Jimmy: 0:58

When you're setting up your decorations and things like that, make sure your decorations are obviously anchored and things like that, so they don't fly off the roof, slap you in the head. Things like that. That'd be good. It's good stuff, right, and the big one with ladders and I'll talk about ladders the next couple few holiday stuff too, because people are on lots of ladders climbing, doing things, hanging decorations. So just make sure your ladders are in good working condition, they're not bent, they're not on uneven ground. The rungs, the handles, the bars of the cross piece are called rungs. Those are not, you know, smooth. You want them, you know, with a little grip on them, a little knurled they call it or gnarled, depending on where you're from. So we want to definitely make sure those are all good to go, like Meg said, on level ground. And when you lean them against your house, if you lean it against your house. Try not to put it on your gutter system. Oh yeah, because, yeah, you smash it on. Your gutter system slides off things of that nature.

Jimmy: 2:18

But the big one I want to. One of the big ones I want to talk about we've got a couple things to go is people and decorations. So of course we're going to have our little folks dressed up. Little kids, what have you dressed up? If they have a mask on, make sure they lift their mask when they're crossing streets, walking in between cars, things like that. You know, um, just being just good, safe, just aware of things, um, always obviously carry a light with you. Um, if the, your little gremlins are running around, you know, maybe put a glow stick on or something like that, a light stick, necklace, things of that nature. So those are visible, yeah.

Megan: 2:51

I was looking up like Halloween hazards and. I read that children are somewhere between two to four times more likely to be injured or die from car accidents, like pedestrian, versus car accidents. On Halloween, specifically from the hours of six to 7, is when most car accidents occur.

Jimmy: 3:13

That's interesting On Halloween. That's the witching hour. Ha ha ha.

Megan: 3:20

Car accidents um, but yeah, and it's I also. There's like 70 percent of car accidents, or pedestrian versus car accidents, happen not at like crosswalks but in the middle of the block, when kids would like. I mean, I remember I would be like, oh, the house on the other side of the block has better candy, let's just cross here in the middle of the block and go there. I don't want to walk all the way down to the end of the block crosswalk and walk back, and so I would just jaywalk.

Jimmy: 3:49

I'd never jaywalk, except for on halloween that is so much, makes so much sense for meg, if you know, meg.

Jimmy: 3:56

You know that, wow, that makes sense and now that is so rad and funny. Um, now, the reason why you know the other thing about that is is you know people are always, you know, they want to see their friends too, right, or, like you know, especially in small neighborhoods, like I grew up in a small town and you know my neighborhood and we all knew each other and people from other neighborhoods would usually come to our neighborhood. You know cause? We lived next to the Ritchie neighborhood, so we would all go walk around and it was interconnected. And you know, when we started to drive, we would actually jump in and out of cars and like go trick or treat and like, oh, I'm going to go see Sarah and so, and jump out of a car and run over there and do those kinds of things.

Jimmy: 4:46

So the other thing I want to talk about is human decorations. Um, I know a house that likes the dad of the house, the man of the family, if you will likes to dress up or have one of his kids dress up and scare people, jump, scare them at the doors. Oh yes, megan got excited. That wasn't a scary yo-yo, she was excited because she likes to go to places like that.

Megan: 5:18

I don't, I remember there were three houses growing up that I would always avoid because there was always the same guy, he always was in the same bush, so like I knew to expect it. But I still just didn't bother going to that house because I was like I don't need that in my life. But yeah, there's three houses that we all avoided because we knew that they were like. One of the multiple dead bodies on the porch was probably a live human that would jump out.

Jimmy: 5:42

Yikes. I've seen a couple of houses actually carry, like the person you actually have like a real axe, ooh, or like a real sword or like you know, just crazy stuff like that, and it's like really you got the jump scare. Do you really need to run with, you know, an axe at little kids or at young teenagers? You know, you know, let alone hit yourself in the shin with it. Maybe some of those people deserve to hit themselves in the shin with that. You know, I don't know. You know, just use common sense out there team. You know, be careful with that stuff. People on roofs I don't know if you ever saw that. No, you know people at Halloween would walk along. You know, when I was going to school in the know I was living with my auntie and uncle and my cousin, who's a bit of a dumbass, just decided to crawl up on the roof and like crawl up and down the roof and scare people.

Jimmy: 6:59

Oh, and like as one does. Yeah, and I mean just looking back, you know one slip and that's a wrap. You know one way or another. So he wasn't the first or last person I've seen do that either. I've seen it in a couple houses here walking around. Luckily, where I grew up the roofs were too sloped or there was snow on the roofs so you couldn't really do that a lot. So just be really careful with that team. Just be really careful with that team when you're walking around.

Jimmy: 7:40

There's always seems to be the older I get, the more I see it that Michael Myers person that thinks it's going to be cool to dress up like Michael Myers from Halloween and walk around the neighborhoods. Yeah, that's cool. If you have a really good costume, you can get away with it cool. I remember the guy that did it my most vivid guy when I was growing up I think I was like about 15. And we followed this guy and God for like two hours Just watching him walk through neighborhoods, through the forest, just scaring people, just never stopped, just walked all over the neighborhood. It was so creepy For like two hours and we were, you know, yelling at him, giving him a break character. I think we threw candy at him. We might have thrown popcorn at him or, you know, pine cones at him. I mean not popcorn, but just trying to get his attention.

Jimmy: 8:41

And finally, like I said, like legit two hours, he turned around and I was actually sitting on the hood of Statue of Limitations is over, I guess, but I was actually sitting on the hood of a car with another buddy while we were creeping along down the road and he turned around and he pulled his mask off and he's like, leave me the heck alone and like it's. That was like the worst scare I've ever been in my whole life. This Michael Myers freak was going to like kill us. So just so, I guess my point to that is be real careful, just walking around with your mask on. If you do get scared to Megan's point, don't run across the street, or try not to run across the street, or just be aware of your surroundings where you run, things like that. I know it's easier said than done when you're scared. We don't always get to do that. Now, what happens if somebody gets so scared? They passed out Like as an EMT, megs, like how would you treat that on the street? What do you think?

Megan: 9:45

That's a good question. I think it kind of depends. My first thought would be protect their head. You know, as they start waking up, try not to have them immediately stand up and go all wobble neck. So protect their heads, protect the C-spine. Check for breathing, obviously, because we want to make sure it wasn't a heart attack and that they're still breathing and their heart is still pumping. Yep, I think an interesting sort of off topic, but an interesting sort of situation about halloween is when people do fake gore and like they have. It's like okay, is this person really bleeding from their face or is that makeup? Is there really you know an object impaled on their side? Or is that you know, a fake knife in their side? Yeah, so check to see if there are any injuries and if there are, are they real?

Jimmy: 10:39

Sure, absolutely.

Megan: 10:40

Good point, you know, and make sure that it was just fear and not something else that caused them to pass out like hypoglycemia. I feel like that's probably less likely on Halloween, with all the candy around. But you never know, or alcohol or something else that might have caused them to pass out? Your face is telling me that I'm missing something. What am I missing? No, no, I'm sorry, I had I was that judgy face.

Jimmy: 11:09

That didn't read judge you, judge your face on you. Um, no, no, no, I was thinking myself. That was my deep thought face, not judging face. Um, you don't see that very often, because I don't. Usually I'm not in deep thought a lot. Um, no, what I was thinking was more psychosomatic, right, if you get scared seizures so back to head, protecting the head right and um, or just going into straight psychosomatic shock and they pass out roll them on their side, put them in recovery position slightly, elevate the feet just toes above nose, wait till they wake back up and then calm, keep them calm.

Jimmy: 11:56

Keep them rested keep it chill. Now the other big one on Halloween, but then calm, keep them calm. Keep them, you know, rested, keep it chill.

Jimmy: 12:06

Now the other big one on Halloween that you know we have to think about is anaphylaxis. You know it's allergic reactions. So remember, anaphylaxis, shock is two or more allergic signs and symptoms that are becoming severe, right like the swelling, the closing of the throat, difficulty breathing, the severe itching things of that nature. And then you know, epi pens. Now, megan, you were telling me about a really cool signal that I think that I didn't know about and I think it's a worth putting out there and tell me what that again was again.

Megan: 12:43

Um the teal pumpkin project. Uh, it's where, if kids or somebody in the family has an allergy and they want to avoid candy, um, the parents or the kids will um have like a teal pumpkin as their trick or treat receptor.

Jimmy: 13:01

Um, that was a big word Wow.

Megan: 13:05

Yeah, my words are we're trying today.

Jimmy: 13:08

We're really that was awesome.

Megan: 13:12

But so, if they have, you know, instead of having like an orange pumpkin or whatever it is, if it's teal, whether it be a plastic pumpkin or even like a bag or something like that, it means that they don't want to be receiving candy or edible things. They would rather have non-edible things like, you know, notebooks, pencils, erasers, glow sticks, those fake fangs, things along those that's, you know, still, the kid has the act of trick-or-treating and still gets to have the fun, but doesn't have, you know, the deadly allergy that's going to kill them. Um, so, if you um, one thing that I like to do is I just go to the dollar tree, um, and I have, uh like, when I'm giving out candy, I also have the option of non-food items in case there is, you know, a kid within our year.

Megan: 14:03

I wasn't, oddly enough, I was not a huge candy eater as a child. Like, I'd have a couple of pieces on Halloween, but really like 98% of my candy would just sit in a cupboard until the following year. I'm like, oh, I guess we should check this. I'm getting more tonight and I just like, or I'd use it for, like, christmas baking. But I really didn't eat that much candy growing up. I was more I preferred like ice cream and cakes and stuff, um, so I would always go for the non-food items, just because I was like haha, I like tchotchkes and I see that back to the rules thing again you can't eat too much candy it wasn't even like enforced by my parents.

Megan: 14:44

I was just like nah, yeah, I also. Well, I was gluten-free growing up and a lot of the good candies are not gluten-free, so yeah, yeah but yeah, so um teal pumpkin project, I know that I saw some videos that they do that in Disneyland. There's that Oogie Boogie Bash or whatever, where they do trick-or-treating in Disneyland.

Jimmy: 15:08

What bash Oogie Boogie? Oh, Oogie Boogie. I didn't know what you said.

Megan: 15:15

I think that's what it's called. I don't know, I've never been.

Jimmy: 15:18

You're the Disney person in this room, so we're going with that.

Megan: 15:21

Okay, but they have like the. That's where I first heard of it was at Disneyland, but then I saw that it was a A thing, a, thing, a bigger thing than Disney. Yeah, but I thought it was cool.

Jimmy: 15:32

That is very cool. So be on the lookout for those, those till pumpkins and till candy holders I'm not going to say receptors, but yeah, until next time. We'll see you next time, take it easy.

Megan: 15:49

Be safe.