Fire and Life Safety

Home Escape Tips:

Plan ahead to escape home fire

What would you do if you woke up in the middle of the night and heard your smoke detector ringing? How would you escape if there was a fire? What if that escape route was blocked? To answer each of these questions, you should have a preplanned and practiced escape plan. To help you develop an escape, we would like to offer the following suggestions:

Consider special needs. When developing an escape plan, remember that younger, older, or disabled people may need special assistance. Anyone with special needs should be located as close to an exit as possible. Train others to give special assistance with evacuation.

If you become trapped in smoke, crawl low, keeping your head down. Cleaner air is nearer to the ground.

A closed door is a barrier that slows the spread of fire, smoke, and heat. Teach everyone to close doors behind them as they go outside. If you sleep with your bedroom door closed, install a smoke detector in the bedroom.

If you cannot escape a burning building, stay in a room with an outside window, open that window and close the doors between you and the fire. If there is a telephone in the room, call the fire department and let them know your location. Stuff cracks around doors and vents with towels, sheets, etc. to help prevent smoke from entering the room. Hang a towel or sheet out the window to signal your location and need for assistance.

Conduct fire drills often. Vary the drill by blocking an exit. This requires players to use their "second way out" or by creating smoke signs requiring players to crawl low under the smoke.

Plan and practice home fire drills

Home fires are a threat to your family's safety. About 5,000 people die and over 52,000 are injured each year by fires in residences. Many home fire injuries and deaths are caused by smoke, not flames. A closer look gives an important clue to a way those frightening numbers are reduced. Many deaths and injuries occur in fires that happen at night, while the victims are asleep. A reliable way to awaken these sleepers before the smoke becomes dense would help more people escape uninjured. Now there is a reliable way. Buy a smoke detector; give it as a present. A new battery twice each year (when you change your clocks) and you will be a part of reducing the national figures of fire deaths. Plan and practice for a safe escape. Home fire drills may sound silly, and a serious fire is no fun to talk about, but a little time spent selecting escape routes and practicing what to do if the detector goes off may save lives if fire ever comes to your home:

Walk through the main escape route several times. Try it in the dark or with your eyes closed. Memorize the number of steps between obstacles or turns. If a piece of furniture keeps getting in the way, move it to clear the path.

Plan alternate ways of escape from each room. If the main route is blocked by fire or smoke, how would each family member get out? If bedroom windows are too high for safe jumping, perhaps you should buy a rope ladder to keep at a window in each bedroom.

If you must go through a smoke-filled area, crawl on hands and knees with your head low to avoid breathing smoke.

Agree on a place to meet outside the home so you can count noses and be sure everyone is safe. For further information, please feel free to contact our fire station.

Fire Escape List

In case of home fires:

If you smell smoke in your room, feel the door to see if it is hot. If it is hot, do not open it. Use an alternate exit. This door test is not always a true indicator of temperatures outside the closed door. Extreme temperatures may still exist even if the door does not feel particularly hot. Open the door very slowly and cautiously.

Get out as fast as possible. Stay low. Do not breathe smoke. Protect breathing passages and lungs.

If unable to escape, block off smoke with towels, clothing, or fabric placed under doors.

Crawl to a window and open it, if possible, from both the top and the bottom.

If there is a phone in the room, call for help. Yell out the window and wave a sheet or curtain for attention.