National Fire Prevention Week

By LENNY C. LEPOLA

News Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Editor

On Sat­ur­day, August 6, mem­bers of the BST&G Fire Dis­trict held an open house at the fire sta­tion as part of National Fire Pre­ven­tion Week, with this year’s theme “Have 2 ways Out” focus­ing on the impor­tance of escape plan­ning and practice.

BST&G Chief Jeff Wil­son said while many fam­i­lies have a basic plan to get out of a burn­ing home and meet at a des­ig­nated place so every­one knows all mem­bers of the fam­ily are safe, very few fam­i­lies have an escape plan with alter­nate ways out of a home in a fire emer­gency, and even fewer fam­i­lies prac­tice their escape plans.

“A home fire hits in this coun­try every 85 sec­onds, and 85 per­cent of all fire deaths are caused by home fires,” Wil­son said. “Every three hours some­one dies in a home fire, that’s roughly seven peo­ple each day, and some­one is injured in a home fire every 39 minutes.”

Wil­son said most fatal fires kill one or two peo­ple. In 2010, 19 home fires killed five or more peo­ple. These 19 fires resulted in 101 deaths.

Those num­bers add up, Wil­son said. In 2010, the lat­est num­bers avail­able, 2,640 Amer­i­cans died in home fires; 13,350 were injured.

“Nobody thinks a home fire will hap­pen to them so they don’t plan, and even if they have a plan they sel­dom prac­tice that plan,” Wil­son said. “Only one in every three Amer­i­can house­holds have devel­oped and prac­ticed a home fire escape plan to ensure they could escape quickly and safely.”

Wil­son said hav­ing two ways out of each room in a house, and prac­tic­ing escap­ing dur­ing a fire emer­gency, is espe­cially impor­tant for teach­ing chil­dren what to do in a fire; and once out­side Wil­son empha­sized the impor­tance of every­one in the fam­ily meet­ing at a pre­de­ter­mined location.

Fam­i­lies should prac­tice dur­ing both day­time and night­time hours, using a pri­mary exit route and a sec­ondary exit route. Learn to close doors when leav­ing rooms to slow a fire’s progress, Wil­son added, and if there is smoke stay low where the air is clearer.

Also have a plan to assist any­one need­ing help to escape a burn­ing home, such as young chil­dren, older adults or peo­ple with disabilities.

Wil­son also rec­om­mended that home­own­ers use smoke alarms, and make cer­tain that bat­ter­ies are changed peri­od­i­cally. He said almost two-thirds (62 per­cent) of reported home fire deaths resulted from fires in homes with no smoke alarms or no work­ing smoke alarms.

“Nobody thinks a home fire will hap­pen to them,” Wil­son said. “But fires con­tinue to happen.”

Posted by Gary Henery on Oct 17 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.