House fires are one of the biggest safety threats facing American families today. According to the USFA, there were approximately 364,000 fires in homes every year, resulting in over 11,000 injuries and 2,775 deaths. As a homeowner I find these stats very disturbing. Don’t you?
One of the best ways to protect your family from tragedy is to simply develop and practice a family fire escape plan. Yet, only 26% of homeowners have a family fire escape plan.
Don’t you think it’s time your family developed one?
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Backstory
Up until this month, we were in the majority of homeowners without a family fire escape plan. We had never discussed how we would react in the event of a house fire.
I knew we needed develop one. But I kept procrastinating. Stupid and irresponsible of me, I know.
Recently I got TWO kicks right in the pants that I needed to finally take action.
First kick? While cleaning out the cabinet under the sink to fix our garbage disposal I came across the fire extinguisher. And the gauge on the fire extinguisher under my kitchen sink read “empty”.
Whoopsy…
Second kick? I just finished reading Red House, a great autobiography about a family living in an old house in Massachusetts.
The author mentions how her father forced the family to run numerous impromptu fire drills. And how those fire drills prepared them for one night when a fire almost destroyed their house. And saved their lives.
The fire started near their mother’s workbench where she restored old furniture. Wet rags soaked in Danish Oil were wadded up and had exploded, starting the house fire.
As I was reading in bed, my jaw dropped. That very week I was restored an old table with Danish Oil! And guess what was sitting in my basement at that very moment? Rags dampened in Danish Oil….
Needless to say, I dragged myself out of bed, went down into the basement, grabbed the rags, walked out of the house in my pjs to deposit the rags outside.
Quite a sign, eh? It was the motivation I needed to start developing a family fire escape plan for my family.
And now I want to motivate you to do the same.
Fire Extinguishers vs. Fire Escape Plan
A quick note about fire extinguishers. Most homeowners incorrectly assume that fire extinguishers are the primary tool in home fire safety.
However, when researching how to choose the right fire extinguisher, I reached out to a fire expert who gave me an eye-opening perspective….
Having fire extinguishers are a good start to fire safety, BUT a home escape plan was a more important and effective tool to ensure family safety in the event of a fire.
– Charles Jennings
In other words a fire escape plan increases your chances of getting your family out of the house alive versus relying on a fire extinguisher.
5 Resources to Develop a Family Fire Escape Plan
I was unsure where to start when developing a family fire escape plan. Luckily, I was pleasantly surprised to find SO many organizations with websites dedicated to home fire safety and escape plans.
Ultimately, I found the following 5 resources the most helpful to develop a family fire escape plan.
- Make Safe Happen
- Home Fire Drill Day
- National Fire Protection Association (NFPA)
- Sparky the Fire Dog
- National Safety Council (NSC)
I’d recommend working through these websites in order.
The Make Safe Happen website is a perfect “first stop” in learning the basics of home fire safety. The next resource, Home Fire Drill Day, is the ideal resource roll up your sleeves and to dive into the nitty-gritty of developing (and practicing) a family fire escape plan.
While the Home Fire Drill Day website is a comprehensive resource, the remaining 3 websites shouldn’t be ignored and well worth a look. These 3 resources dig even deeper into the family fire escape plan development process with additional tips and strategies. For us, these tips brought up some crucial questions and concerns that we needed to address ASAP – well before a fire starts.
Disclaimer
Please don’t rely solely on this post to create your family fire escape plan. I’m just the average everyday homeowner trying to make my home a safer place.
Visit the experts’ links below. Read through their pages. There you will find information that will resonate specifically with YOUR family and home.
1. Make Safe Happen
Website: Make Safe Happen
UPDATE: As of March 2024, this site was no longer active.
Every year, millions of children are injured in and around the home. In 2015 Nationwide Insurance, one of the largest insurance companies in the world, founded the Make Safe Happen Program with the goal to make homes safer for children. This program is aimed at giving caregivers and parents tips and tools to make their homes safer.
The program partnered with race car driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. and his family to raise awareness and help adults be proactive about home fire safety and child injury prevention.
What I Liked….
This website is a great introduction to the reasons behind developing a family fire escape plan. The video of Dale Jr. and his sister telling their story of the fire in their childhood home prove that:
- Traumatic events like house fire can happen to anyone at anytime, and
- Awareness and prevention can save your family.
Second, I also liked the mobile app with a stopwatch designed for practicing home fire drills. Experts believe that people have under 2 minutes to safely escape a burning house. After 2 minutes, the chances of survival sharply decrease. Use this app’s stopwatch during your practice drills to ensure everyone gets out of your house in under 2 minutes.
2. Home Fire Drill Day
Website: Home Fire Drill Day
UPDATE: As of March 2024, this site was no longer active.
Home Fire Drill Day is a safety day developed by the Make Safe Happen program in partnership with eight other organizations. Every October during Fire Prevention Week, a day is designated specifically for Home Fire Drill Day.
The rationale behind Home Fire Drill Day is simple:
WE DO FIRE DRILLS AT SCHOOL. WE DO THEM AT WORK. NOW LET’S DO THEM AT HOME.
Makes sense, right? I’d never thought of it that way before, but it’s spot on. It’s time we homeowners step up and take the responsibility to practice fire drills. at home
What I Liked….
What I liked best about this website is how clearly they presented these 3 steps on how to develop a home family fire escape plan and how to exactly practice a home fire drill.
- Step 1: Know Where To Go
- Step 2: Check Your Fire Alarms
- Step 3: Do the Drill
This breakdown helped me (the average homeowner) make the process of creating a family fire escape plan easier and less overwhelming.
The second thing I liked about this website were the fun and unique ideas around implementing the fire drill, such as:
- Practice drills during TV commercial breaks
- Practice drills at night in the dark with all the lights turned off; and
- Using participation prizes such as extra TV time, or breakfast at night, or extra dessert.
3. National Fire Protection Association
Website: National Fire Protection Agency
The NFPA is well-respected resource of fire, electrical, and related hazards. While it has significant priority on professional issues, it also focuses on public education and awareness, like this well-produced YouTube video.
What I Liked….
I specifically liked the Escape Planning tips on the NFPA’s public education section on developing a our family fire escape plan:
Escape Planning Tips
The NFPA provides a clear bullet-point list of comprehensive Escape Planning Tips under their page How to Make a Home Fire Plan. Read through these tips and implement them with younger children. While these tips may make sense to you, they might not make sense to your children.
We found that implementing these 3 NFAP tips brought up a lot of questions and challenges. If we hadn’t gone through the motions with our children, they wouldn’t be prepared to escape our home in case of a fire.
TIP: Floor Plan & Walk Through
Pull together everyone in your household and sketch your home’s floor plan. Then walk through your home and identify all possible exits and escape routes. Sounds simple, right?
We walked around the house with our oldest child (7 years old) and drew a floor plan with potential exits (doors and windows). Everything was going smoothly until we discussed how she would leave the house, especially through a window.
She grew very nervous and had a lot of questions. Questions that I would prefer to address during a drill rather than in the thick of an actual house fire, such as jumping out a window feet-first, not head-first. This planning stage was the perfect opportunity to talk through her anxiety and address her questions.
Walking through our house also think about second floor escapes. It reminded me that in college I kept a fire ladder under my bed (I lived up on the 4th floor). If you have a second floor, consider keeping a fire ladder somewhere easily accessible.
TIP: Clear Escape Routes
When walking through your home, check to make sure the escape routes are clear and doors and windows can be opened easily.
For most adults this is easy. We all can unlock and open windows. But what about your children? It occurred to us that we weren’t sure if our kids knew how to unlock and open the windows. We tested them.
And the girls failed! They didn’t know how to work the locks! Scary, right?? Now is the time to teach your children how to unlock windows and open window screens.
TIP: Get Out & Stay Out!
Under no circumstances should you ever go back into a burning building, right? If someone is missing, inform the fire department when they arrive. Firefighters have the skills and equipment to perform rescues.
We were surprised that is not universal knowledge. When we asked our oldest child what she would do if there was a fire and she was on the first floor and we were on the second. Would she leave or come get us?
She replied she would go upstairs. Yikes! NO!!! Yet another tip that was an important reminder to me that we can’t take fire safety for granted and to sit and talk with our children!
4. Sparky the Fire Dog
Website: Sparky the Fire Dog
Sparky the Fire Dog is NFPA’s mascot for children to learn about fire safety. Apparently Sparky has been around for awhile, making his debut in the 1950s. Children could mail in 25 cents and be a part of Sparky’s Fire Department.
What I Liked….
On the website, there are a variety of activities for children to play and learn from Sparky. There’s games, videos, coloring pages, even songs about fire safety.
This was the best website to engage children in home fire safety. If you have little ones, this might be a great place for them to play and learn.
Sparky for Children
Sparky was well received by all our three children.
For my 7-year old, there were a variety of engaging activities she liked. She especially liked the house escape game (although the game doesn’t work well with our touchpad). She liked them so much she was on the computer for a lot longer than I expected. I had to take the computer away from her!
These activities were the ideal way to get her thinking about fire safety and transition her to working on developing our family fire escape plan with us. After we did a few games on used to springboard to the planning out floor plan.
Obviously toddlers can’t be responsible for escaping on their own during a fire drill. But they can color the Sparky activity sheets and watch videos about fire trucks and the professionals who can help them in the event of a fire.
Floor Plan Template
Another aspect I liked was the Sparky’s floor plan template. A floor plan template is the perfect tool to complete with your family. Identify locations of your home’s windows and doors, and determine the best exit routes from each room of the house. It’s the backbone of your plan.
There are a ton of floor plan grids online. We tried a couple. This one gave us the biggest grid space to draw our floor plan.
Make sure you print a few copies. You will inevitably make an error. I’d like to blame all the errors on my daughter, but I can’t…. It’s a LOT harder to draw your floor plan than you think! It took a few tries, but we finally had an accurate depiction of our home.
Sparky for Adults
While Sparky is meant to teach children about fire safety, it can also teach adults a thing or two. While watching my 7-year old interact with Sparky online, it taught me that she should have more input on developing our family fire escape plan. Especially when it came to determining a meeting place.
In the event of a fire and she is by herself, she’ll likely be in a panic and forget the meeting place that I chose for her. So instead of the adults just deciding on our meeting place and telling her, we asked her where she would go once she left the house. Would it be to the big maple tree in our front yard? Or would it be to a neighbor? And if so, to which neighbor?
Based on this conversation, we then chose our meeting place together as a family.
5. National Safety Council
Website: National Safety Council
Like the NFPA, the National Safety Council (NSC) is a leading nonprofit safety advocate with decades of experience. The mission of the NSC spans both workplace and home safety, and covers a myriad of concerns such as fire.
What I Liked..
What I liked about the NSC Fire Safety page was their detailed tips for practicing fire drills at home (listed below and taken straight from their website).
- Practice getting out with your eyes closed, crawling low to the floor and keeping your mouth covered
- Practice closing doors behind you
- Learn how to “stop, drop and roll” if your clothes catch on fire
- Remember to test door handles to see if they are hot before opening them
- Teach children never to hide during a fire, and how to escape on their own in case you can’t help them
It was the only website I found that mentioned “stop, drop and roll”. Don’t you remember learning as a child? I had totally forgotten about that! It also raises an excellent point to teach children never to hide during a fire. Having kids myself, I can see them being scared and hiding in a closet or under their bed instead of escaping.
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This is SO important! So glad you posted about having a plan. We have one we’ve practice at our home as well.
Cindy – so glad you have developed your plan and practiced a drill with your family. I hope that my post can motivate even just a few families to plan, practice and be safe!
This is so important to have! I had no idea these resources for kids existed. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks! I was surprised by how long my 7-year old stayed on Sparky’s website and played all the games. I thought she might do one or two, but she tried them all!