A fire safety plan

Family Day and family safety are a natural fit.

On Monday Thunder Bay Fire and Rescue Service personnel want families throughout the city to take 15 minutes to discuss an evacuation plan should a blaze break out in the home.

John Boorman, acting director of fire prevention at TBFRS, said the province-wide campaign could very well save lives and it doesn’t take much time to complete.

“Sit down, take a little piece of paper, draw your home plan and try to find two ways out of every room,” Boorman said. “In the past we’ve found that during fire investigations that some people get trapped because there’s only one way out of the room. Doors may be frozen at this time of year, especially the sliding doors, so we want to make sure you can get out two ways.”

A fire can consume a room in as little as two or three minutes. In 2009 more than 100 people across Ontario died as a result of fires, many of which might have been prevented had a family plan been in place.

“A lot of them were preventable. Some people were trapped and they did not know how to get out of their home during a fire. You tend to panic. If the smoke gets thick you start to choke, you can’t see. And if you haven’t practiced a fire safety escape plan, you could get caught,” Boorman said. “It could cost you your life.”

A proper plan should also specify responsibilities, particularly for adults, and a centralized meeting place far enough away from the house that no one will be in danger should a fire break out.

“You have to have somebody you know who’s going to take the children out, who’s going to take grandma out, if you have elderly people,” Boorman said. “One of the big reasons that we’re doing this on Family Day is that we have a lot of people who have sleepovers with their kids, and you may have somebody that’s not familiar with your house. So you want to go over two ways in, two ways out.”

A working smoke alarm on each level of the house is the best advance warning system a family can put in place, he continued. Not only that, it’s the law.

“We have the early-warning detection. When it goes off, you have to know which way to go,” he said.

Other tips include ensuring exits are barrier-free and if caught in a fire, get low and crawl under the smoke to the nearest safe exit. And of course, when safely outside, phone the fire department.