Five Tips for Planning a Fire Escape Route that Will Save Your Family

There are thousands of tips available for planning a fire escape route, how to do it, where to meet, how to teach the kids and a million other bit of information, but nothing is so vital as planning an escape route that actually WILL save your family in the event of a house fire! All the information in the world is of no use the night fire strikes the home--unless you have practiced the scenario, taught the kids the escape method, and are prepared to survive a fire in the home. Information is useless when it is not properly applied!

Planning a Fire Escape Route Tip #1: There are five areas in the home that are considered the most deadly when it comes to fire--the kitchen, laundry room, furnace area, attic and garage. Yet for some reason, hundreds of thousands of people think that they are being fire safe because they plan an escape route that leads them directly through one of these rooms and outside of the home. The problem--an escape route that leads through the most deadly area of the home, where the hottest fires tend to ignite is a recipe for disaster! When planning a fire escape route you must make sure that the escape route does not entail going through one of these deadly rooms in the home!

Planning a Fire Escape Route Tip #2: In planning an escape route, the meeting place should be outside of the home at least 300 feet away. This means that telling all of the children to meet at the big tree in the back yard is not going to work! Why? Because when flashover occurs and the fire reaches full intensity within the home widows will blow out, glass will fly and flames as hot as 600 Degrees will come barreling out of the home at more than 60 mile per hour! A child standing near the home, at the designated meeting area can be killed if the meeting area is too close!

Planning a Fire Escape Route Tip #3: Practice makes perfect! But, practice is only valuable if the escape route has alternatives, there are harsh conditions created to make the escape route practice seem real and everybody involved knows their part! When planning an escape route, make sure that you a lot for the possibility of fire engulfing a room that makes escape difficult. Plan for the unexpected, do not let any possible scenario go unplanned or un thought of, and most of all try each escape route out!

Planning a Fire Escape Route Tip #4: Plan for the escape of family members who cannot escape on their own--disabled, elderly, and most of all the babies! Make sure that you have planned how you will quickly get in, get the child or the disabled or elderly adult out of the home in the event of a fire. Know your route to get to the person and the route to escape and make sure that you have planned multiple routes for this as well! Fire doesn't care if it gets in the way of your escape route so make sure that you have enough alternatives to overcome any possible scenario!

Planning a Fire Escape Route Tip #5: Finally, make sure that all residents of the home know that there is nothing more important than getting out of the fire safely! No possessions matter, no heirlooms matter as much as life, and once you are out of the fire safely you must stay out! Hundreds of people die each year because they have a valid escape route yet once they are out of the deadly fire they return into the home for a possession or a pet or some other reason and then the fire kills them! Make sure that when you plan your fire escape route all members of the family know not to EVER go back inside of the home until it has been deemed safe by the fire department!