Latah Valley, WA. – Every minute counts after a fire starts in your family’s home.
“In a house fire, fires double usually about every minute,” said Spokane Fire Captain Corey Newman.
Following recent house fires in the Spokane area, Newman is reminding everyone the importance of creating and practicing a home fire escape plan with your family.
“Especially families with young kids, you want to make sure you have a fire escape plan,” Newman said. “A strategy for if there’s a fire in the house, which exits you’ll use, where you’ll meet up afterwards.”
Newman said as a father of two young children himself, he and his family practice their fire escape plan regularly, and it’s good to remind children how they should react during that emergency, and make sure everyone is ready to adjust if the originally chosen to safety, such as the staircase, is no longer the safest option.
“If you find yourself in a situation where there’s fire coming up the stairs, the carbon monoxide can overcome someone very easily,” Newman said. “If you do find yourself in that situation, it would be safer to evacuate out the windows.”
He stressed that it’s safer to jump from the height of a second story building, or even higher, than it is to go down stairs through smoke and/or flames.
“We have had, as a department, experiences where people have jumped from a third story apartment building and suffered minor injuries, compared to people who tried to go down through a fire,” Newman said.
One simple way we can help prevent damage and tragedy during a house fire: closing doors.
“Sleeping with the door closed provides a significant barrier to fire, especially in a bedroom,” Newman said. “If your family is sleeping with parents on one floor and kids on another (floor), an important thing to consider is having that door closed at night means that you now have enough time to escape that building, and let firefighters know where they are, and not risk your injury by going through smoke or fire, which can overcome you very quickly.”
That means parents are discouraged from trying to rescue their children in another room if that would require them having to go through smoke and/or flames to reach the child. Instead, parents are encouraged to wait for the firefighters to help.
The first line of defense against house fire tragedy is having a working smoke detector that alerts you to kick start your family’s home fire escape plan.
“It’s important to have working smoke detectors,” Newman said, “the US Fire Administration says usually after they sound you have about two minutes to get out of a burning building.”
Newman reminds the community that smoke alarms should be in every sleeping room and outside each seperate sleeping area, and that these devices are easy to get.
“If you reach out to any fire station, if you do not have a working smoke detector in your house, we can install one for you, free of cost,” Newman said.
It’s advised to test smoke alarms in the house at least once a month by pressing the ‘test’ button to make sure that alarm is working, and all smoke alarms in a house should be replaced when they no longer respond to that test, or every 10 years.
The Spokane Fire Department also reccomends having multiple ways out in your home fire escape plan, assigning a ‘buddy’ to family members who may need extra help, remind everyone to crawl low below the smoke, to never go back into a burning building, and to be aware that double-key deadbolt locks and metal window bars have proven deadly.
For additional information, you can call the Spokane Fire Prevention Division at 509-625-7058
