If fire breaks out in the middle of the night, is your entire family ready? A violent storm hits the neighborhood, knocking out power and the smell of smoke starts filling up the house. Do your children know what to do? Do you know whom to call? Do you have escape plans, alternate routes and an agreed meeting location?
Now is the time to start planning and training your family to ensure everyone will be ready if a fire strikes.
What’s Important to Your Family?
In the aftermath of a fire incident, all anyone cares about is if everyone in the family got out safely. Usually our pets are a very close secondary concern. The last thing people care about are material belongs. Keep valuable jewelry, firearms, safety deposit box keys, important documents and any other important belongings in a fireproof home safe, so those items are the last thing you’re thinking about during a fire.
We wish that every fire safety story could end as it did for this young girl, who was babysitting her brother and nephews. She knew just what do when the fire broke out:
Emergency Plans
An emergency plan is a crucial component to ensure your family’s safety and security. While you may think you know what you’ll do, panic often sets in during an emergency situation. In some instances, you may even be separated after a disaster. Being prepared gives you peace of mind, but it could also save your life.
The Red Cross offers some great initial steps to help you and your family begin to prepare for an emergency should it arise:
- Meet with your family or household members
- Discuss how to prepare and respond to emergencies that are most likely to happen where you live, learn, work and play
- Identify responsibilities for each member of your household and plan to work together as a team
Emergency Planning Resources
Check out this Red Cross test to assess your family’s preparedness plans, which including tips on keeping your emergency preparedness kit and plan up-to-date. Ready.gov offers some additional safety tools, as well as a plan template to help create a family preparedness plan.
Taking the time now to create a plan may prevent a difficult situation from being coming worse. Will you be ready? Contact us to learn more about fire safety and monitored fire alarm systems.
