With the rise in fuel prices that has pushed heating oil to more than $3 per gallon, some homeowners are looking for cheaper alternatives to keeping warm this winter. But danger lurks in some of those substitute heating fixes, northern New England fire officials warn.

Maine Fire Marshal John Dean said firing up a wood stove after not using it for years, using space heaters carelessly or installing kerosene heaters improperly can cause fires or lead to carbon monoxide poisoning.

Dean also worries that more people will use their cooking stoves as an emergency heat source or will burn unseasoned firewood, which is less expensive but can cause flammable creosote to build up in a chimney.

“This time of year brings those concerns to a head regardless of the cost of oil, although this year is much, much worse,” Dean said.

Of the 294 fire fatalities in Maine from 1983 to 1992, heating caused 22 percent of the total. The biggest single cause was smoking.

In New Hampshire, heating units are the top cause of fires, state Fire Marshal Bill Degnan said. Degnan recommends having heating systems checked to cut the risk.

Degnan said combustible materials should be at least 36 inches away from heating surfaces and ashes should be disposed of in a covered metal container and kept well away from buildings. Degnan also warns that kerosene heaters should never be refilled indoors.

Officials in Maine have not analyzed whether the incidence of house fires or carbon monoxide poisoning increases while oil prices are high. But Westbrook Fire Chief Gary Littlefield said figures from the late 1970s and early 1980s, when prices also shot upward, suggest a connection.

“There was a tremendous rise in use of alternative fuels and also chimney fires. People didn’t maintain their chimneys or didn’t install the stoves correctly,” said Littlefield. “I would not be surprised if we see an increase this year.”

In 1980, when the Iranian Revolution and hostage crisis forced the price of oil to its previous inflation-adjusted record, house fires in the United States climbed to 734,000, the highest level in three decades, according to the National Fire Protection Association.