Safety To-Do #8: Protect Your Home and Your Family from Fire

Every year, thousands of families are devastated by the loss of a home or worse, a family member, due to household fires.  While the number of fire-related injuries and deaths has trended down somewhat over the last ten years, the number of reported household fires remains constant at around 400,000 annually, with total property damage steadily increasing to over $7 billion per year.

According to the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), a residential fire was reported every 79 seconds in 2007.  The Injury Center at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) further reports that every 32 minutes, someone in the US is injured in a fire, and every 162 minutes, someone dies.

These statistics become harder to swallow when we learn that 63% of residential-fire deaths occurred in homes that did not have working smoke detectors, meaning lives could have most likely been saved with a simple, inexpensive installation or maintenance.  In the remaining 27% of deaths, the smoke detectors were functional, but the victims could not escape in time for various reasons.

Your safety task for this week is actually a short list of tasks, all of which are necessary to help protect your family:*

• 
  Teach your children about fire safety!  There is a great, interactive site at http://www.firesafety.gov/kids/ (Click “Launch Kids Page”.)  Although it is geared toward young children, I highly recommend having older kids work through the slideshow, games and quizzes as well. It is a wonderful visual tool that will help kids of all ages (parents, too) learn and remember what to do in a fire.

• Make an emergency escape plan and practice it!  Go through various scenarios with your children, pretending the fire is in different locations of your home.  Ask them to show you what they would do.

• Install smoke detectors throughout your home, especially near bedrooms.

• Change batteries and clean away dust in existing detectors.

• Place fire extinguishers in your home, especially in areas such as the kitchen and garage, where fires are likely to break out.  If you use heated hair styling tools or space heaters in the bathroom, it may be a good idea to put one there as well.

• If you have fire extinguishers already, check the gauges to make sure they are still good.  Over time, fire extinguishers become ineffective.

• If you have a multilevel home, consider purchasing escape ladders.

There you have it, your Safety To-Do(s) for this week.  It may seem like a lot for one week, but if you have not recently completed a similar list, please do not put it off any longer.  No one ever thinks his or her home will catch fire, and most likely it never will, but why take the chance?  Being prepared could save your life and the life of someone you love.

Sources:
Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), www.cdc.gov
FireSafety.gov, “An Information Recourse for Eliminating Residential Fire Deaths,” www.firesafety.gov
National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), www.NFPA.org

*While this list is a good start, there is more you can do to improve fire safety.  I encourage you to review the above sources for more information.