Fire Challenge 1
Canyon Hills 92532
Fire Challenge 1
Your children are home with a babysitter, you are out for the evening. A fire starts at the bottom of the stairs, smoke alarm is going off. What will your children do? Small children tend to go to their safe place, under the bed or in the closet. Smoke kills and so can Carbon Monoxide even before the fire reaches their room. Fire Department could be 5 minutes away. What do you want them to do?
Some parents say they could handle the situation if they were there. Some parents don't know what to do. Therefore their children probably doesn't know what to do.
I asked some children. They said they had some training at school. They would need to group and get out a window. Smaller children said the window was hard to open or couldn't be opened. It was suggested that you break the window with a chair or something. OK, now there is broken glass on the floor and jagged pieces of glass in the window. What do you do? Should require everyone to have slippers or shoes and maybe a blanket over the window pieces. The smaller children can't get up and out the window without a chair or a foot stool. Smaller children said they would have trouble with the screen. Remember, if there are too many obstacles, the children will go to their safe place, ... under the bed or in the closet.
No one said to get everyone together and close the door to slow down the flames. Is this the best room to exit the building? Once out of the window, how safe are you on the roof. OSHA requires safety lines for workers because it is so easy to slip off the roof. If you have life vests for boats, could you have life harnesses for children on a roof? Short tethers to keep them on the roof until a neighbor came to their rescue. The small children need help to get up to the window, maybe a footstool would help. Maybe a rope tied to the bed or into a wall stud would give them assurance once they got out on the roof.. Maybe a loop in the end of the rope would allow older children to lower the smaller children to the ground. Maybe knots in the rope every foot would make it easier for the children to hang on. Maybe the rope could be in a container ready to go and the container could be used to climb out the window.
A 3 foot tall child has a long way to go when the roof is 12 feet off the ground. And the problem really becomes complicated if there is no roof to escape on. Imagine several small children at a window wanting to escape and it's 12 feet down with no roof. Could they practice to go to another part of the house that had a roof.
When I was little we had fire drills in school. You got together and followed an adult out to the playground. Someone had to direct you. In an emergency can you imagine your young child thinking thru any difficult scenario. I think the only way they could survive is if you practice it.
A single story home offers so many advantages for escape. If you climb out a window it's only 3' to the ground. A small child is probably going to survive. If there is a fire in the hallway, you can leave thru the garage or some other path. But a two story house presents a real problem for small children. And again if they give up, they will go under their bed or into the closet and the smoke and carbon monoxide will get them. You owe it to your children to provide for their safety.