Fire Safety: Have You Taken These 4 Critical Steps?

This week is Fire Safety Week, making it a perfect time to do a quick check to make sure all your fire safety ducks are in a row. Here are four critical steps you can take to help keep your family safe (and I daresay, most of us probably have some room for improvement).

1. Minimize hazards.

It should go without saying that the first step is prevention. I think we all know this, but life happens, homes get rearranged, etc. and hazards can be overlooked. Take a few minutes to walk through your house and look for any fire hazards that may have crept in undetected. (If you have children, this can be a good activity to involve them in, as it will help raise their awareness.) Some things to watch for:

outdated electrical work/setup
non-functional circuit breakers, fuses, GFI (ground fault interruption) outlets
matches & lighters accessible to children
flammable substances improperly stored
fireplaces that lack screens
sooty chimneys
curtains, bedding, and/or other flammable objects too close to heaters, stoves, candles, etc.
lack of fire extinguisher(s)

2. Ensure you have a working warning system.

There should be a smoke detector/fire alarm on every level of your home, as well as one in every bedroom (especially if you sleep with the bedroom doors closed). I also like to be sure there’s one in the kitchen and in any room with a fireplace, since those are high-risk areas for fire. (These may be the alarms for their respective levels, not necessarily in addition.)

If you have a fireplace, and type of fuel-burning heat system, and/or gas anything (heat, stove, etc.) you also need a carbon monoxide detector. It’s not a bad idea to have one anyway, especially if you have an attached garage, but the presence of fuel-burning mechanisms in the home make it a must.

Batteries should be replaced every 6 months, and the alarms themselves should be replaced every 10 years. (That probably works out to about $10-25/year, which is pretty inexpensive to protect your lives.) It’s often recommended that residents change their smoke detector batteries when Daylight Savings Time starts and begins, because it’s a built-in reminder. That’s a great option, but if you have something else that serves just as well as a reminder, that works, too. (Did you know that you can order batteries through Amazon’s Subscribe & Save program, so you don’t forget and run out?)

These are the smoke detectors I have in my house. The bedrooms have simple alarms. They’re inexpensive and easy to afford multiples of. (In fact, you can often buy them in multi-packs.) This particular one shown below (far left) has an “escape light,” which is nice, but optional.

I have the middle option in my kitchen. It’s mostly basic, but it has what I call a “shut up button” that’s easily accessible. That’s for when you burn the cookies or something, and you know there’s smoke in the kitchen, and you know the alarm is going to go off, but you also know everything is fine.

On the far right is a combination smoke/carbon monoxide alarm. This is what we have in the downstairs (all one big room), which is where the woodstove is. It has a voice feature, which is really nice, because that way when it goes off you know which alarm is going off (without having to try to remember alarm patterns). The voice is loud, but calm.

First Alert SA304CN3 Smoke Alarm with Escape LightGet It First Alert SA320CN Dual Sensor Battery-Powered Smoke and Fire AlarmGet It First Alert Battery-Operated Smoke/Carbon Monoxide Alarm with VoiceGet It

3. Create an evacuation plan.

There should be a plan in place for getting out of the house in case of a fire and for everyone to meet up at a (safe) designated location so you know who’s accounted for. If you’ve moved recently, you might need to work on a new plan. If your children’s ages have shifted notably, it might be time for a change.

Make sure everyone knows the plan, and practice it regularly. Keep in mind when choosing a meeting spot that young children need to not get hit by cars while trying to get there. If your home has more than a single story, you also need to ensure there’s a way for occupants to get out of the upper levels if the stairs are impassible. Consider something like this, and make sure everyone knows where to find it and how to use it.

Kidde KL-2S Two-Story Fire Escape Ladder with Anti-Slip Rungs, 13-FootGet It

4. Train children to respond in an emergency.

Do your children know…

how to call 911?
their address (so they can give first responders their location)?
the evacuation plan?
to stay low in case of smoke?
to stop, drop, and roll if they catch fire?
what firefighters look & sound like in their gear so they aren’t afraid of them? (Visiting your local fire house and seeing this in person is ideal, but if you can’t, there are videos here and here that you can watch.)

If they’re a little older, do they also know not to put water on a grease fire?

It can be difficult to teach young children emergency response skills, and their importance, without scaring them. ConsumerSafety.org has created a fun spin on Simon Says that will enable you to practice many of the skills from the list above in a lighthearted way. “Fireman Says” is illustrated below; you can download it from their website at the bottom of this page about fire safety.

Be sure you adapt your emergency plan as necessary for your children’s ages & abilities and the layout of your house. For instance, when my oldest was little, she had a floor-level window in her bedroom, with a child’s wooden table in front of it. We taught her that if there was a fire and she couldn’t get out, she should get under that table. That would have the benefit of keeping her low compared to smoke, keeping her close to an outside-accessible location where we’d know where to find her, and providing some protection if we needed to break the window to get her out. In this house, with our younger children, we’ve had to make different plans.

If you have young ones, you might also want to consider having “backups” of their favorite loveys kept somewhere outside the house (the car, Grandma’s, etc.), so they would be able to obtain that comfort in the aftermath of a fire. (Another option is keeping a spare in your bug-out bag, and storing the bug-out bags outside the house somewhere — perhaps in a shed or detached garage.)