 Good morning everyone. Greg and Bruce thank you for joining us for our annual event to talk about holiday safety. The NFPA and the State Fire Marshal's Office from Maryland are great partners for the CPSC and we appreciate the work that you do to promote fire safety throughout the year. I also want to thank the outstanding staff here at the CPSC's National Product Testing and Evaluation Center. They've set up some great demonstrations as they do every year to demonstrate for you the fire hazards that we find typically in homes throughout this holiday season. And the CPSC we want your holidays to be bright and festive and safe. So the CPSC is helping consumers unwrap the gift of a safe holiday by helping them avoid hidden dangers related to the holiday seasons and holiday decorations. During the two month holiday seasons last year about 14,000 consumers were treated for injuries related to holiday decorating. This includes holiday lights, Christmas trees, candles and ornaments. Falls from ladders, shocks from lights and other mishaps that ruin the holidays in the movies all have a happy ending but in real life they can have an unhappy ending and ruin your holiday season. If you're planning to string lights from the porch all the way up to your roof be sure you follow our ladder safety tips. Using a short ladder to reach a tall window is a script for a YouTube video that you don't want to star in. As for Christmas trees, consumers are buying them earlier and earlier and that can cause problems. Often people are having such a great time during the holidays that they forget to water the tree which can lead to a terrible fire. A dry tree not only loses its color and drops needles throughout your house but it can be quite dangerous. Dry trees can catch fire and become completely engulfed in flames in just a matter of seconds. Christmas trees are involved in hundreds of fires annually. From 2008 and 2012 there was an average of 19 million dollars in property damage in the loss of one life per year. Candles have proven even more dangerous. There are thousands of candles each year resulting in fires resulting in 74 deaths and 347 million dollars in property damage. So here's our advice at the CPSC. When purchasing a live tree check for freshness. A fresh tree is green, the needles are hard to pull from the branches and the needles won't break in your hand or between your fingers. When you tap the tree on the ground you should not lose needles on a green tree. Be sure to keep your stand filled with water and when you set the tree up in your home place it away from fireplaces and radiators. For holiday lights you want to make sure your lights bear the mark of a recognized testing laboratory like underwriters laboratories so that they you can be sure that they meet current safety standards. However we are seeing more and more counterfeit lights come through to our stores so be sure that you check the lights to make sure that these lights are safe because they may have a counterfeit label. We have seized dangerous lights at the ports and done many recalls of the years to keep these counterfeited products out of your home. Now check each set of lights for broken or cracked sockets, frayed wires or loose connections and throw out the damaged sets. Do not use damaged sets on your tree. We want consumers to know that the CPSC and our fire safety partners are on the job to help keep them safe this holiday season. And we want families to follow the simple safety steps as they set up their decorations and enjoy the holiday season. One of the things that everyone likes including my wife is to put candles up and she loves the way they look. I convinced her that the battery operated ones can be just as nice and a whole lot safer to put in a home. So that is one of the suggestions certainly that that we have for people that still want to have that that ambiance that comes with having a candle, but yet to be safer. Holiday lights. I just got done helping my wife put the holiday lights up on my house. She loves to do it and it makes the house really look nice and the people like it. Always make sure that we check them, replace the bulbs and the ones that are frayed, get rid of them and make sure that the ones that we have are certified by testing agencies such as UL. Cooking is another aspect that you have to keep in mind of during the holidays. Anything left on the stove even for a few seconds can become a tragedy and eliminate all of the processes that you've been trying to achieve for a fantastic holiday meal. If you're preparing food, stay in the kitchen. Stay with the food that's cooking. If you're using a fryer outside, stay with it because that moment you walk away is when things go awry. Make sure you have a three-foot zone around the cooking appliances. No kids, no pets, no toys. That one moment when you're not paying attention, you slip, you fall backwards, you could cause scald injuries to yourself, the child or that animal. So please be mindful of safety all year round, but especially when you're trying to prepare a fantastic holiday meal.