Safety Tips
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Home and Family: Getting Started
The best things in life are free...
Like being ready as a family for any emergency. Here are some simple steps to get you started. And they are absolutely free.
- Talk about what might happen: blizzard, fire, flooding, etc.
- How would you find out about it?
- Do you know how to contact each other? (See Communications Plan)
- What would you need if you couldn't get out for a few days?
- What are the most important things to take with you if you had to leave your home? If you go to a shelter, you may need pillows, blankets, and snacks to eat until the shelter is fully functioning. Think about financial papers, check books, credit cards, etc.
- Plan together about the special needs of your children and others in your family.
- Is there a blanket or special toy loved by a child?
- Is there a member of your family who requires special accommodations?
- Plan for your pets as well. They are a part of your family too.
Low Cost, High Value
Once you have talked through how you would deal with an emergency as a family, there may be a few things that you don't have on hand, that you want to pick up.
- Flashlights or a battery radio if you don't have one
- Fresh batteries for your flashlights and radio
- Non-perishable food for your home supply kit, or "Go kit" (what's on sale this week?)
- A little extra pet food or litter, to make sure you have enough on hand.
CARBON MONOXIDE HAZARD
Using a generator indoors
WILL KILL YOU IN MINUTES.
Exhaust contains a poison gas
you cannot see or smell.
Recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
POISON GAS - POISON GAS - POISON GAS
ONLY use outdoors and
far from open windows,
doors, and vents.
Never use a generator
indoors, in garages,
or carports.
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Source
Homes are dwellings, duplexes, manufactured homes, apartments, townhouses, rowhouses, and condominiums.: Home Candle Fires, Marty Ahrens, National Fire Protection Association, Quincy, MA, September 2007.
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U.S. Home Candle Fires
U.S. fire departments responded to 15,600 home
started by candles in 2005. These fires caused
1 structure fires that were
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150 civilian fire deaths;
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1,270 civilian fire injuries; and
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Overall, candles caused 4% of reported home fires, 5% of the home fire deaths, 10% of the home fire
injuries, and 8% of the direct property damage in reported home fires
$539 million in direct property damage.
Causes and Circumstances of Home Candle Fires
Details from the U.S. Fire Administration’s National Fire Incident Reporting System show that
in 2002-2005:
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On average, one home candle fire was reported every 34 minutes.
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furniture, mattresses or bedding, curtains, or decorations, was too close to the candle.
More than half of all candle fires started when something that could burn, such as
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In one-fifth (20%) of the fires, the candles were unattended or abandoned.
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industry found that only 13% of candle users burn candles in the bedroom most often.
Almost two-fifths of home candle fires begin in the bedroom, although the candle
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candle fires began with decorations compared to 4% the rest of the year.
December is the peak time of year for home candle fires. In December, 13% of home
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Eve, New Year’s Day, New Year’s Eve, and Halloween.
The top five days for home candle fires were Christmas, Christmas
Candle Fire Trends
Although home candle fires fell 8% from 2004 to 2005, more than twice as many were reported in 2005
as in 1990.
Smoke Alarms Save Lives
The most important things you need to know are smoke alarms
save lives and they should be in every home. Follow these important
smoke alarm safety measures:
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smoke alarms monthly, replacing batteries once a year
or when a low-battery alarm chirps and performing other
maintenance as NFPA and your smoke alarm manufacturers
recommend. And of course, a smoke alarm disabled because
of nuisance alarms provides no protection at all.
Make sure your smoke alarms are working. This means testing
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alarms in every location required by NFPA standards
each level of your home, outside each sleeping area and
inside each bedroom.) Tens of millions of U.S. homes are estimated
to have smoke alarms but not enough smoke alarms
to meet the standards and protect their homes.
It is important to have not just one smoke alarm but smoke. (On
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by any smoke alarm will sound an alarm at every location
where a smoke alarm is installed
done using hard-wiring or wireless broadcast technology.
Interconnected smoke alarms provide early warning of fires
that are still far away or are located on the other side of a
door or wall that may block sound.
Interconnect your smoke alarms so that a fire detected. Interconnection can be
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the home knows what to do if the smoke alarm sounds
Develop and practice an escape plan so that everyone in.
That includes planning a second way out from every room in
your home. Every household that develops and practices an
escape plan with two ways out from every location improves
its time to escape in every type of fire.
There Are Different Types of Smoke Alarm
Technologies—Ionization and Photoelectric
The two most commonly recognized smoke detection technologies
are ionization smoke detection and photoelectric smoke detection.
Ionization smoke detection is generally more responsive to flaming
fires and photoelectric smoke detection is generally more responsive
to fires that begin with a long period of smoldering (called
“smoldering fires”). For each type of smoke alarm, the advantage it
provides may be critical to life safety in some fire situations.
Home fatal fires, day or night, include a large number of
smoldering fires and a large number of flaming fires. You can
not predict the type of fire you may have in your home or when it
will occur. Any smoke alarm technology, to be acceptable, must
perform acceptably for both types of fires in order to provide early
warning of fire at all times of the day or night and whether you are
asleep or awake.
The best evidence has always indicated that either type of
smoke alarm will provide sufficient time for escape for most
people for most fires of either smoldering or flaming type. However,
research is ongoing, and standards are living documents. If
at any time, research points to a different conclusion, then that
will lead to proposals for changes in the NFPA standard or the
closely related Underwriters Laboratories standard for testing
and approving smoke alarms. Both organizations currently have
task groups looking at smoke alarm performance in the current
home environment.
For Best Protection Use Both Types of
Smoke Alarm Technologies
For best protection, it is recommended both (ionization and
photoelectric) technologies be in homes. In addition to individual
ionization and photoelectric alarms, combination alarms
that include both technologies in a single device are available.
Nuisance Alarms Can Be Minimized
Ionization type smoke alarms are more susceptible to nuisance
alarms due to cooking, the leading cause of nuisance alarms,
but both types have some susceptibility to nuisance alarms from
cooking fumes, and both have susceptibility to nuisance alarms
from the steam from a hot shower.
In the past decade or so, a number of steps have been taken
to reduce the likelihood of nuisance alarms, including hush features
and refinements to installation rules that include guidance
on safe distances from nuisance sources.
TV Demonstrations of Smoke Alarm Performance
Can Be Misleading
Informal demonstrations, such as ones done for TV news shows,
of smoke alarm performance can seriously mislead the viewer
and do not provide a sound basis to assess performance. These
demonstration tests are not performed in a controlled or scientific
way that compares the time of smoke alarm operation to
the time when occupants would be incapacitated. The selected
fire scenarios may not be representative of real fatal home fires.
Passing or failing a “test” of this sort may have nothing to do
with performing well or badly in the wide range of real fires. A
valid engineering analysis must select fires that are realistic and
analyze them accordingly.
In an informal demonstration, the eye reacts to conditions
that look dangerous, mostly visible smoke and visible flame.
However, most people are killed by invisible gases, which do not
necessarily spread at the same rate as smoke or flame. A valid
engineering analysis must measure conditions caused by fires
and assess them according to their real danger.
What you should know
about
For more information go to www.nfpa.org/smokealarms
One-Stop Data Shop
Fire Analysis and Research Division
One Batterymarch Park, Quincy, MA 02169 Email: osds@nfpa.org
www.nfpa.org
DANGER!
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