Children and Fire

Keeping Your Children Fire Safe

Children deserve their own category in the fire safety dialogue for two reasons.

• Children under five are twice as likely as all other age groups to die in a home fire.
• An average of 300 people each year die in fires caused by children.

What this means is we have to protect our children from home fires and protect our homes from those same children.

Escape Plan Considerations for Young Children

One of the most important elements of a family’s escape plan is how to ensure young children get out of the home safely.

• Give special consideration to the role of each parent and to older children in the family. Who rescues who and how? One suggestion: Keep a baby harness near the crib so a parent can carry the baby and still have hands free for another child, to check doors, crawl at floor level if the home has filled with smoke or navigate out a window.
• Once the logistics are resolved, play out the same scenario assuming one parent, or older child, is absent.
• For older children, practice the escape plan on a regular basis and quiz them in between drills.
• Show them how to check doors, cover their mouths and noses and crawl along the floor below the smoke.
• Learn the Stop, Drop and Roll technique if clothing catches on fire and include the drill in the practice sessions.
• Make sure they can open windows, remove screens and release security bars easily in the dark. If this proves too difficult, revise the escape plan.
• Stress the importance of evacuating to the designated spot outdoors.

Give yourself more time to respond to fire danger by installing and maintaining smoke alarms. This topic will be dealt with on its own page, but for families with young children, it bears repeating over and over again. If your childrens’ bedroom doors are closed at night, install a smoke alarm in their room in addition to an alarm in the bedroom hallway.

Teaching Your Children About Fire

Flames attract moths and children with equal allure. Youngsters are curious about fire, which is your opening to start teaching them about the dangers.

• Keep matches and lighters out of reach and out of sight until they are old enough to fully understand that neither are toys.
• Limit your lighters to those identified as child resistant.
• Establish the child-free zone around the stove, fireplace, portable heaters and other sources of heat and flame.

As adults, we are often lax when it comes to fire safety common sense. We know not to spill flammable liquids or knock over candles. If that liquid spills or the lit candle falls over, we can react quickly and safely. Children operate more by Murphy’s Law. If there is an open can of turpentine, a child will kick it over. An unattended, a lit candle becomes an extreme fire hazard in the presence of a child. Once your child starts to crawl, your world changes and you must make it firesafe and childproof.

Tagged as: Add new tag, Children and Fire, evacuating children