Fire Prevention Week

Keep Your Home and Family Safe From Fire

This is Fire Prevention Week (FPW), a great opportunity to review and practice your family’s escape plan.  Remember the number 1 rule if a fire happens in your home:

Get out, stay out and call for help. Never go back inside for anyone or anything. Call the fire department from outside your home.

Make an Escape Plan

Every 88 seconds, a home fire is reported. Once the smoke alarm sounds, fire can spread quickly, leaving only a minute or two to escape. That’s why it’s so important to have a home escape plan.

Start by drawing a map for your home and following these guidelines from the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA):

• Plan two ways to escape from each room
• Make sure all doors and windows leading outside open easily
• Identify secondary routes – a window onto an adjacent roof or a collapsible ladder from upper-story windows
• If you live in a multi-story building, plan to use the stairs – never the elevator
• Designate an outside meeting place a safe distance from the house where everyone should meet

Now Practice Your Home Fire Escape Plan

Everyone – even children – need to know your family escape plan in case of a fire. The NFPA indicates that 71% of Americans have a home fire escape plan but only 47% have practiced it. Practice your fire drill with everyone in the house during the day and at night, at least twice a year.

Remember to:

• Practice getting out with your eyes closed, crawling low to the floor and keeping your mouth covered
• Practice closing doors behind you
• Practice how to “stop, drop and roll” if your clothes catch on fire
• Practice testing door handles to see if they are hot before opening them
• Teach children never to hide during a fire, and how to escape on their own in case you can’t help them

Fire Prevention

Cooking fires are the leading cause of home fires and fire injuries. While cooking, make fire safety a priority by keeping these tips in mind:

• Be alert; if you are tired or have consumed alcohol, don’t use the oven or stove top
• Stay in the kitchen while you are frying, grilling, boiling, or broiling food
• When simmering, baking, or roasting, check the food regularly, remain in the kitchen while cooking and use a timer
• Keep anything that can catch fire away from your stove top

Heating is the second leading cause of home fires. Follow these tips from the American Red Cross:

• Keep all flammables, like paper, clothing, bedding, drapes or rugs, at least 3 feet from a space heater, stove or fireplace
• Never leave portable heaters and fireplaces unattended; turn off heaters and make sure fireplace embers are extinguished before leaving the room
• If you must use a space heater, place it on a level, nonflammable surface, like ceramic tile, not on a rug or carpet
• Keep children and pets away from space heaters
• When buying a space heater, look for models that shut off automatically if the heater falls over

In addition to cooking, other top causes of fire include smoking, electrical problems and candles. To minimize risks:

• Institute a “no smoking” policy in the house
• Check all cords and replace any that are frayed or have bare wires
• Switch to flame-less candles
• Keep matches and lighters high and out of children’s reach in a locked cabinet

Working Smoke Alarms Are a Must

About three out of five fire deaths happen in homes with no smoke alarms or working smoke alarms. Smoke alarms are a key part of a home fire escape plan providing early warning reducing your risk of dying in a fire. The NFPA recommends you:

• Install smoke alarms on every level of your home, inside bedrooms and outside sleeping areas on the ceiling or high on the wall
• Keep smoke alarms away from the kitchen, at least 10 feet from the stove, to reduce false alarms
• Use special alarms with strobe lights and bed shakers for people who are hard of hearing or deaf
• Test smoke alarms monthly
• Replace batteries annually, and change the batteries in your carbon monoxide detector at the same time
• Replace smoke alarms that are 10 or more years old

Visit the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) FPW website for additional resources to help you.