WORCESTER, Mass. - WPI’s Fire Protection Engineering department held its annual holiday demonstration this week to study the dangers of Christmas tree fires in homes.

“We're always looking at how things burn so we can better understand how to protect people from that,” lab Director Fritz Brokaw said.

While they maintained their annual decoration of a real tree, which hasn’t been watered for at least a week and a half, this year marks their first year of also burning an artificial fir. Both went up in flames in seconds.

“This was the first time we decided to burn a plastic tree," burn chair of the WPI student chapter of the Society Fire Protection Engineers Christian Vogt said. "We kind of had this thought, ‘Oh, it’d be nice to compare those two.’ And our lab manager said, ‘You know what? Let's do it.’ We did not expect it to really go up that violently, and just produce that much smoke.”

The data shows both trees burned intensely in the range of 600 to 1,000 degrees. Vogt said the black smoke from the fake tree was because of the presence of toxic byproducts.

“We kind of thought that, you know, it was marketed as being flame retardant," Vogt said. "And the problem with that is that oftentimes, the reduced flammability comes at the cost of producing more toxic gases. And so I think what we had here in our setup was that we were able to overcome that barrier and still produce a significant fire. But it also produced a lot more of that nasty smoke that is really toxic.”

And especially with this year’s drought conditions, Brokaw said it’s best to water your tree daily if you’re electing for a real one.

“Trees can store a lot of water. So hopefully, the drought hasn't been too bad on them," Brokaw said. "But get it right and water as soon as you can and then as soon as you're done with it, take it out of the house before it becomes a danger.”

The Fire Protection Engineers said to make sure you’re using rated lights for decorations and monitor any open flames near your tree. And it said it’s important to note smoke detectors in homes save lives year-round.

“Fire doubles in size about every 30 seconds," Vogt said. "So even if you just go away for two minutes to get a cup of tea, by the time you come back, if it's uncontrolled, it might already be exponentially larger than it was when you left.”