Last year, during Fire Prevention Week, a family in Calabash, North Carolina, shared a story that has stuck with me.
They went to bed one night with a lithium-ion battery charging in their garage. Nothing about that sounds especially unusual. Honestly, how many of us have plugged something in before bed and never given it another thought? A phone, a tool battery, a laptop…we plug it in, go to sleep and expect it to be sitting there waiting for us in the morning.
Except this time, it wasn’t.
The battery caught fire while the family slept, and by the time they woke up, their garage was engulfed. Their story was shared as part of Fire Prevention Week because it started with something so incredibly ordinary. There wasn’t some big dramatic decision that screamed, “THIS IS DANGEROUS!” It was something most of us have probably done without thinking twice.
And that is the part that stuck with me.
They weren’t doing something that FELT dangerous. They were doing something familiar.
I think THAT is where this story becomes about a whole lot more than a battery.
If you work in construction, manufacturing, utilities, transportation or really any job where you do the same things over and over again, you know how easy it is for something to become normal. You have used that grinder 500 times. Climbed that ladder 1,000 times. Driven that route so often you could probably tell me every bump in the road.
Hopefully not with your eyes closed. 😉😂
But you know what I mean.
Experience is a good thing. It makes us faster, more confident and better at what we do. But there is also something a little sneaky about familiarity. When something has gone right 999 times, it is REALLY easy to believe number 1,000 is guaranteed.
It isn’t.
And no, I am not here to give you another lecture about batteries, chargers or the rules on your jobsite. You already have people for that. 😂 You probably know the procedures better than I ever will.
What I care about is the moment AFTER you already know the rule.
The moment when you see something that doesn’t look quite right and your brain says, “Eh…it’ll probably be fine.”
Because sometimes it WILL be fine.
And that is exactly what makes this hard.
You can ignore the damaged cord and nothing happens. You can use that questionable battery one more time and finish the job. You can take the shortcut and get away with it.
Maybe ten times.
Maybe a hundred.
Until the one time you don’t.
That family in North Carolina didn’t go to sleep expecting their garage to catch fire. They went to sleep expecting morning.
And THAT sentence hits me differently.
Because when I think about safety, I don’t really think about the rulebook first. I think about morning. I think about the people who assume you are going to be sitting across from them at breakfast, walking through the door after your shift, texting them something ridiculous, yelling at the dog to stop barking or complaining that somebody drank the last cup of coffee. 😂
Normal life.
The boring stuff we don’t realize is pretty wonderful until something threatens to take it away.
This Fire Prevention Week, and the 2026 theme is “Charge into Fire Safety: Safe Charging Is a Superpower.” Lithium-ion batteries are in our phones, laptops, tools, toys, e-bikes, scooters and so many of the things we use at home and at work every day. The information about how to use and charge them safely absolutely matters.
But I think the bigger message goes beyond charging a battery.
It is about what happens when something becomes SO familiar that we stop paying attention to it.
That is what I mean when I talk about moving safety from the head to the heart.
Your head already knows what you are supposed to do.
Your heart remembers who you are doing it for.
So maybe during Fire Prevention Week, don’t worry about memorizing another list of rules. Instead, think about the things you do every single day without giving them much thought anymore.
What have you done so many times that you’ve stopped really seeing it?
And the next time your brain says, “It’ll probably be fine,” maybe give yourself one more second.
Not because Laurel told you to. 😉
Because somebody is expecting morning with you. 💛
