Teaching Fire Safety

This week we held a family planning night on the topic of Fire Safety. I was impressed that the children were very attentive. I'm sure it had something to do with the fact that a year or 2 ago they had their air conditioner short out and catch on fire during the middle of the night. They remember watching the firefighters working on that fire and are still filled with a sense of gratitude toward those men.

This meeting was so successful! We made up a drawing of our house floor plan, both upstairs and down, and then discussed what possible evacuation routes we could take. We also discussed:
- What the smoke detector sounds like.
- How to feel the door to learn if there is fire on the other side.
- How to yell "FIRE FIRE FIRE" as we evacuate and even practiced yelling.
- How to climb out of a window-well if needed or drop down from an upstairs window.
- Crawling on the floor to evacuate if there's smoke AND WHY.
- We chose a MEETING place outside of our home!!!
- We practiced Stop, Drop and Roll. Even our 2 yr old got to try it and loved it.
- We talked about where we keep our Fire Extinguishers and actually practiced using an extinguisher - putting out a bush in the yard (Papa wouldn't let us have an actual fire!).
- We've posted the evacuation plan on each floor where we'll be reminded frequently.

During the upcoming weeks we'll put a match to the smoke alarms and have actual practice drills when everyone is at home and at different times of the day so if you see us in our front yard in our PJ's - you'll know why. Of course we finished off the night with ice cream topped with berries - yummmm! It was a memorable evening.

I wish I could explain the sense of peace that we are feeling in knowing that we have talked about this as a family. We will repeat this discussion every few months. It's such a simple thing to do, costs no money, and takes very little time BUT it brings such a reassurance knowing that it may save the lives of our loved ones in the future. We hope that every household in our neighborhood will have this same meeting in your own homes. When you do, please let us know how it went and if you learned anything new by doing so. We can learn from each other!

After the first of the year, we will be having a little training class with our very own neighborhood fireman teaching us a few fire safety rules. We'll let you know when that is and hope that you will attend so that you can take the information back to your own families.