Your ability to get out of your home during a fire depends on advance warning from smoke and carbon monoxide (CO) alarms and advance planning.
Fire can spread rapidly through your home, leaving you as little as one or two minutes to escape safely once your smoke alarm sounds.
A closed door may slow the spread of smoke, heat, and fire.
Install smoke alarms in every sleeping room and smoke/CO alarms outside each separate sleeping area. Install alarms on every level of the home.
Talk to everyone in your household and make a plan.
Walk through your home and inspect all possible exits and escape routes. Households with children should consider drawing a floor plan of your home, marking two ways out of each room, including windows and doors.
Carl Prochillo, Fire Prevention Officer for the Collingwood Fire Department offers these important safety tips to help you and your family make a plan in case of fire or carbon monoxide in your home:
- Draw a floor plan of your home showing all your windows and doors. Discuss the escape route with every member of your household.
- Know at least two ways out of every room if possible – especially sleeping areas. Make sure all doors and windows leading outside open easily.
- Agree on a meeting place outside your home where every member of the household will gather to wait for the fire department. This allows you to count heads and inform the fire department on arrival everyone is accounted for.
- Practice your escape plan at least twice a year. Have a fire drill at night and during the day with everyone in your home.
- A fire drill is not a race. Get out quickly, but carefully. Make your exit drill realistic. Pretend that some exits are blocked by fire and practise alternative escape routes. Pretend that the lights are out and that some escape routes are filling with smoke.
- Teach children how to escape on their own in case you can’t help them.
If the smoke alarm sounds:
If the smoke alarm sounds, get out and stay out. Never go back in for any reason.
If people are trapped, firefighters have the best chance of rescuing them.
If you have to escape through smoke, get low, and go under the smoke to your way out.
Call 911 outside your home from a safe location.
For more information, call Collingwood Fire Deptartment Fire Prevention Division at 705-445-3920.
