Did you know that after 10 years, 30% of smoke alarms will fail? Did you know that a house fire is reported every 90 seconds with over 1.9 million house fires reported every year? With these staggering statistics it is important to ensure a fire prevention and readiness plan.
Smoke Detector Management
In order to protect your family and get a fire prevention and readiness plan organized, you need to take a few steps. First, if your smoke alarms are over 10 years old, replace them with new ones to avoid any risk of malfunction. Next, if your smoke detectors are younger than 10 years old, check the batteries in your current smoke detectors. Also, dust your fire alarms. This will make sure debris is not hurting the detection mechanism and will operate properly.
The next step is to to ensure that you have enough smoke detectors in your home. There should be one smoke detector on each level of your home at a minimum. However, a better recommendation is keep a smoke detector near or in each bedroom. This is because a lot of fires occur at night while people are sleeping and everyone needs to be woken up to leave the home. If you have high value items that are concentrated in specific rooms, you may also want to add smoke detectors to these areas.
Remember Carbon Monoxide Detectors
In addition to smoke detectors, carbon monoxide detectors are an added benefit to ensuring safety in your home. Carbon monoxide detectors detect the gases that are poisonous and oftentimes deadly. Carbon monoxide detectors are great because they detect the gases before you know they are in your home. Like smoke detectors, these carbon monoxide detectors should be located near the bedrooms.
Fire Extinguishers
Fire extinguishers are an easy to have tool to prevent fires from getting out of hand. Many fires start in the kitchen with cooking, Having a portable fire extinguisher on hand eliminates any need for out of control fires. Storing a fire extinguisher underneath a cabinet or in a pantry near your stove will be convenient if a fire does break out. Fire extinguishers can be purchased at your local hardware store.
Fire Escape Plan
Additionally, if there is a fire in your home take the necessary precautions by developing an escape plan. Include your family in this planning process. And escape plan is a necessary step in your fire prevention and readiness plan. Get your family involved with the following escape plan tools.
For more information on how to be prepared, please visit the Residential Fire Safety Institute
