According to reports by the U.S. Fire Administration, USFA, accidental fires in the home are the cause of thousands of injuries and deaths every year. Fire safety is not something that you want to take lightly and you need a plan for how to handle it if the worst should happen. One way that you can do this is by having a fire escape plan for your home. The best way to develop one of these is sit down with the entire family and have a discussion about fire safety and escaping the home in the event of an emergency. By having this discussion with everyone at once you can be sure that everyone is aware of the plan and has the exact same details as everyone else. Fires spread very quickly and it can be disastrous if one person has a completely different escape plan than everyone else.
During this discussion is should be determined what everyone’s responsibilities are going to be. For example, if there is a young child in the home who is responsible for making sure that child is safe and out of the home. You and the family should go through every room of the house and determine what are the two safest routes of escape from that room. Obvious routes are of course the door or the window. You need to establish a meeting place that is outside the home and a safe distance away where everyone will meet in the event of a fire. That way if a fire should break out and someone is missing from the meeting place, you can inform the fire department who is missing and where they likely are. Also be sure that everyone knows that during a fire is not the time to try and save your belongings. Leave them all behind and try to wake the rest of the family by shouting fire while you crawl to the nearest escape point.
If you live in a residential building where there is more than one family, like an apartment building, there will often be additional routes of escape during a fire. Many apartment buildings have fire escapes located outside the windows of the building. A lot of residential buildings will also have specially marked fire exits that you can use as well. When you move in it’s important to have the property manager point out these fire exits for you so that you can use that knowledge in your family safety plan. No matter where you live you should be practicing your fire safety escape plan as a family at least once a month.
The most important part of any fire safety plan is determining a way to notify the local fire department once you get outside the home. A lot of times a neighbor will call when they smell smoke or see flames but you should have a plan to do it yourself and not hope that the neighbors are awake. Including your neighbors in your fire safety plan is a good way to do this. Being able to knock on the neighbor’s door and call the fire department from there is a great solution. But remember the most important step is getting everyone out of the house first and calling the fire department second. Write your safety plan down and keep it with emergency phone numbers so that everyone in the family can review it whenever they wish and keep it fresh in their minds.
