Did you know in 2020 home fires caused 2,580 deaths and fire departments responded to 356,500 home fires in the United States? Teaching your children how to prevent fires and how to respond properly in a fire situation are skills your children will remember and practice throughout their lives.

Key steps to protect your children at home:

1) Ensure you have working smoke alarms: You need to make sure that there are working smoke alarms on every floor level in your home. Make sure you check the alarms regularly and change the batteries when they run low.

2) Develop a fire safety plan: It is important to develop a fire safety plan so that you and your family know what to do in the event of a fire. Draw up a careful plan and make sure that it can be followed easily by everyone. Your plan should include how to exit your home, where to meet outside at a fixed location, ie: mailbox, and explain to NEVER go back into a burning building under any circumstance.

3) Invest in home fire escape ladders: If the route of escape is blocked by fire on the upper floors in your home, people may be left trapped. With this in mind, invest in some residential fire escape ladders for each bedroom in the home so that everyone can escape safely.

4) Assess the home for potential hazards: You should make sure you check your home thoroughly for any potential hazards that could result in a fire. Keep items like space heaters, fire places, and working stoves at least 3 feet away from flammable items to reduce combustion.

When it comes to fire safety for kids, you need to ensure you educate them so that they are properly aware of the potential dangers as well as the steps that they need to take in the event of a fire:

1) Potential hazards that they should not touch: Please explain to children about the dangers of playing with things such as electrics or matches. Also, make sure that they know all of the fire hazards in the kitchen and the things that they need to stay away from such as the cooker and electrical appliances. Children are naturally curious and these things may be tempting unless you explain the dangers to them.

2) How smoke alarms work and what they do: While you, as the parent/guardian, are responsible for the installation and maintenance of your smoke alarms, you need to ensure that your children are aware of what they are for. Talk to your kids about the functions of these detectors, what it means if they start bleeping and that there could be a potential danger.

3) Going through the fire safety plan and doing some practice runs: Make sure you familiarize your children with the fire safety plan that you have devised so that they are fully aware of what they need to do in the event of a fire. You should go through each step of your plan carefully and in addition to this make sure you do some practice runs so that they are confident about what they have to do if a fire breaks out.

4) What to do in the event of a fire: You also need to speak to your children about exactly what they should and should not do if a fire does break out. For instance, tell them not to hide, as their main aim should be to escape. Advise them that the easiest way to escape if there is a fire is to drop to the knees and crawl to the nearest escape route. This means that they will be exposed to less smoke, which makes it easier for them to get out. In addition, shows them what to do if their clothing does catch fire while trying to escape. This means demonstrating how to stop, drop to the ground, and then roll in order to extinguish the flames. Also, make sure that they are aware that they should never return back inside a burning building.

5) Contacting emergency services: If a fire breaks out there is a chance that one of the children may have access to a phone while the adults do not, in which case they need to know about dialing 911. Please tell them to tell Dispatch their name, address location, and explain what the emergency is. By ensuring you explain all of these things to your children, you will be able to reduce the risk of a fire in the home and increase the chances of them being able to escape to safety in the event that a fire does break out.

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More fire education and safety resources for children, visit: https://sparky.org