How to React to Fire and Smoke

10/6/2020 (Permalink)

Residential fire safety and preplanning are very important

Ensure Your Alarms Work

As they say in many sports, the best offense is a good defense. Setting your home up to be ready for a fire will make you better off than if you just blindly ignore the fact that a fire can happen in any home. Setting up a system of carbon monoxide and smoke detectors will allow you to know if there are fires in areas of the house that you can’t directly see.

Sure, it may be annoying to have fire alarms go off when you burn the dinner or they need new batteries, but that is all a minor inconvenience when a real fire occurs. Replacing their batteries regularly and putting them in multiple locations will allow you to be notified if there is a potential fire in the house.

Have an Escape Plan

Just like schools and businesses have dedicated fire plans and places to meet if a fire alarm goes off, the home should be no different. Even if you live alone, having your own fire plan to either deal with or evacuate from the fire is essential to responding effectively. If everyone is just running around and panicking, the situation will be much worse in the end.

Know the nearest exists for every room, establish a meeting location, and know what you absolutely need to get out of the house in your plan. Being able to react calmly in the event of a fire because everybody knows what to do reduces the risk of further accidents and allows you to deal with the problem more effectively.

Analyze the Scope of the Issue

Depending on the size and location of the fire, you may be able to analyze the situation and make a quick decision to deal with the fire safely. Obviously, if you are woken up by smoke and a room on fire that is not an appropriate time to become a detective and find what caused the fire.

If something in the kitchen caught on fire or a candle was just knocked over, you can take the time to quickly analyze the fire and make a decision as to how to act. If the fire is small and localized, grab your fire extinguisher and attempt to put it out yourself when everyone is safe. In cases where the fire is growing rapidly and can't be contained, fall back to your action plan mentioned in the last step and go from there.

This tip may vary greatly depending on your living situation, but the safety of yourself and others is worth more than whatever may be taken by the fire. Making sure you are able to find everyone and get them out of the house before even dealing with the smallest of fires is a great way to ensure maximum safety from the get-go.

If you are living in an apartment or multi-family unit, alerting other members is a great way to get people alert and informed about the situation. If you are living alone, making sure any pets are ok as well as yourself; that is really all you need to worry about in the immediate moment.

Call for Help

Even though this is a later step, this entire list of steps can occur in less than a minute if there is a real fire. Calling for help is one of the only ways you can be certain that the fire is dealt with to the greatest extent possible.

Calling the fire department is obviously your first step if the fire is large, as their services are needed to put out the fire. Even if you take care of the fire by the time they arrive, they would rather show up to an extinguished fire than not get a call at all.