Fire Prevention Week is October 9-16, 2016 – being prepared means doing everything you can to prevent a fire in the first place, and then ensuring that your family will be safe if a fire does happen in your home. This year’s theme is Don’t Wait, Check the Date (of your smoke alarms) but there’s more that you can do to help ensure your family will be safe if a fire breaks out.
Early detection is critical
Smoke alarms save lives. You’ve heard it before – that’s because it’s true. From 2009-2013 in fires where there was a fatality and where the smoke alarm did not operate, 45 per cent were not connected to power (30 per cent had no battery; 14 per cent had a dead battery). Had alarms been in place, those people may have had a much greater chance of survival.
Did you know that, thanks to the prevalence of synthetic materials in our world today, you may have less than four minutes to get out of your home once a fire starts? To help ensure that your family can hear beeping alarms, they are required on every level of your home and outside every bedroom.
If you have small children or deep sleepers in your family, take them into account in your escape plan. This writer had a scary experience with her young daughter many years ago – with a living room full of smoke due to a closed flue (thankfully not an actual fire) and an alarm screaming outside her bedroom door, she slept on and on. It’s not unusual for young children to sleep through loud noises. Alarms that have a voice alert feature may help to wake them, but plan for how you’ll get them out safely if they don’t.
How will you get out?
Practice makes perfect. In the stress and confusion of a fire, knowing exactly what to do can help you and your family escape as quickly as possible. Do you have a fire escape plan? When was the last time you practiced it?
Smoke alarms and fire escape plans go hand in hand. Once a fire starts, you have less than two minutes to get out. Having working smoke alarms gives you early detection and then a well-executed and practiced escape plan will ensure everyone gets out safely.
Mike Vadlja, Huntsville Lake of Bays Fire Department’s Fire Prevention Officer
“Fires now burn so much quicker than they did due to synthetic materials,” adds Mike. “Fifty years ago it might have taken 20 minutes for a room to flashover, now it takes less than four-and-a-half minutes.”
Watch this video to see how quickly flashover – the point when everything in a room reaches its ignition temperature and combusts – can happen:
If you don’t have a plan, map one out with at least two escape routes from every room. Agree on a meeting place outside your home. And then practice how you’ll get out, imagining the fire is in a different location each time. If you have children, they’re used to having fire drills at school. Get them used to having them at home too, at least twice a year.
You can learn more about escape plans and print out an escape plan template from the Ontario Association of Fire Chiefs here.
Smoke alarms only work if they’re working
Smoke alarms are an easy and inexpensive way to alert everyone in your house that there’s a fire, but they do need a little bit of TLC.
A smoke alarm can only alert you if it’s functioning properly. Test all of your alarms monthly – it only takes a few seconds – and replace the batteries every time you change your clocks in the spring and fall.
They expire, too – your smoke alarms should be replaced every 10 years from the date of manufacture. That date should be on the back of your alarm. If there isn’t one and you can’t remember when it was installed, it’s time for a new one. Consider a 10-year sealed lithium battery alarm – then you never have to worry about changing the batteries – or a combination alarm that includes other features like voice alerts, lights or a carbon monoxide alarm. Remember that carbon monoxide alarms are now required by law, and generally need to be replaced every seven years.
Practice fall heating safety
Fall has arrived and its cooler temperatures mean furnaces, fireplaces and wood stoves are getting fired up. They make life cozy, but can be a serious fire hazard if they’re not properly maintained.
Have all of your fuel-burning appliances like furnaces and gas fireplaces serviced, have your chimneys cleaned, and ensure your carbon monoxide alarms are in good working order.
You can’t see, smell or taste carbon monoxide. We’ve had a lot of close calls. They call it the silent killer because you don’t know it’s there.
Mike Vadlja, Fire Prevention Officer
On cool, still nights, air can push back into your house through the chimney. “You might smell the wood smoke, but you might not,” says Vadlja, making a carbon monoxide alarm a lifesaver.
Know what your alarm sounds mean
Your alarms are set to make different sounds to alert you. Know what they’re trying to tell you.
Four beeps means carbon monoxide has been detected. Get out and call 911.
Three beeps means smoke. Get out and call 911.
A single chirp every 15-30 seconds means the battery needs to be replaced or the alarm is at the end of its life. Replace it.
Enjoy fire, safely
There’s nothing quite like a warm, crackling fire on a cool fall night. Be sure to check burning bylaws and fire ratings before lighting an outdoor fire, and only light indoor fires in certified and maintained fireplaces and woodstoves. And then put your feet up and enjoy.
Learn more about fire safety from the Huntsville Lake of Bays Fire Department here or the Ontario Association of Fire Chiefs here.
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