Do you have a fire escape plan?

According to the National Fire Protection Agency, firefighters responded to 362,500 structure fires in 2009. These fires resulted in 12,650 civilian injuries and 2,565 civilian deaths. Now, I know that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, but since this blog is more about planning for what you will do when the crap hits the fan, you'll have to research the prevention on your own. Here is a good place to start. The only thing I must mention before we start is that a fire escape plan is pretty useless if you don't know there's a fire, so PLEASE be sure you have smoke alarms on every level of your home (I have them inside the kids rooms and outside in the hallway) and test them regularly.

Making a Plan

Fire escape plans are pretty easy to work out. All it takes is an hour of planning and a meeting with your family to go over the plan and have a run through. If you are the type who likes to put things on paper click here for a fire escape plan grid. I prefer to write out a plan for everyone with their individual responsibilities. However you decide to organize it, there are a few things you need to keep in mind:

-Who will be responsible for small children?
-Who is responsible for calling the fire department?
-If you have a second story, what is the escape plan if the stairs are inaccessible? (In our plan, everyone goes to the same upstairs window which is visible from our meeting place, so that we will know that they can't get down the stairs)
-Choose a meeting place and be sure everyone is clear on where it is.
-Be sure everyone knows their role.
-Don't forget to include house guests in your plan. (This is when people start looking at me sideways. When someone comes to visit us, they are integrated into our fire escape plan before we go to bed on the first night. Crazy I know.)

Really, it's so easy. Here is how our plan works... it's kind of an algorithm but I'll try and put it in list form.

Basic- Myself, Hubby, Baby 1, and Baby 2 (note: master on main, kids upstairs)
-Hubby- goes to get the phone and calls 911. If the fire is small, he gets the extinguisher. If it's too large, he goes outside and around to baby 2's window.
-Me- go upstairs to get kids, if possible, get downstairs, exit the house and go to meeting place (meeting place has clear line of sight to baby 2's window so hubby knows we're out). If unable to get down stairs, go to baby 2's window. Lower/ help babies to Hubby (how you get out is up to you, I'm a fan of fire escape ladders, but you do what works for you).

If there is a guest, they stay upstairs so their job is usually to grab the babies first and come down and wake me and hubby and then we proceed with what's left of the basic plan. Guests are also instructed on what to do if they can't get down the stairs.

The last part of your plan should be to make sure everyone knows that ONCE YOU GET OUT, YOU STAY OUT!!!

Your plan may be a bit more difficult, but the basics stay the same. Just be sure everyone knows their jobs and practice every couple of months. Thanks for sticking with me, hope this was informative, motivational, or, at minimum, not the most boring thing you've read this month.

If you're interested, check out the links page for some more resources.