Big Idea

• It's the 100th Annual Fire Prevention Week
• 3/4 of all US fire deaths occur in homes
• Fire safety can be planned ahead
• Smoke detectors save lives
• Read more...

Fire Won't Wait. Plan Your Escape. 

The Prescott Fire Dept., in conjunction with the National Fire Protection Association, has announced that October 9th through the 15th is National Fire Prevention Week. The theme for this year’s campaign is… “Fire won’t wait. Plan your escape“

According to the NFPA data, ¾ of all US fire deaths occur in homes. Unfortunately, this is the place where most people feel safest from a fire, but is actually the greatest risk. There are, however, things that you can do in your home to keep you safe in the unfortunate event that your house does catch on fire. Smoke detectors should be installed in every room where someone sleeps, just outside each separate sleeping area and on every floor of your home. It’s best when they’re interconnected so that if one detects a fire, every smoke detector will sound an alarm. Test them monthly. 40% of all home fire deaths occur in a home with no functional smoke detector. The batteries in both smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors should be replaced at least once a year with high-quality alkaline or lithium batteries and, the detector itself, should be replaced every 10 years.

The next thing that’s important is to preplan an escape from your home if there happened to be a fire. Make sure that all family members, including children, those with physical disabilities and the elderly know at least two ways out of every room. And the one aspect that people tend to forget is that once everyone’s outside they all know to go to a specific preplanned meeting place. Once you’re out of the house, stay at that meeting place with each other and never go back inside for anyone or anything.

There are a lot of things that you can do to decrease the chance of fire in your home but sometimes a house fire could be inevitable. Make sure that you think through the things that you can do beforehand so that if you have the unfortunate event of a house fire you’ll know exactly what to do.

Remember, “Fire won’t wait. Plan your escape.“