Thank you First Alert for sponsoring this post. October is National Fire Prevention Month and is the perfect time to gather your family and discuss fire safety.
Did you have a fire escape plan growing up? I know this is funny, but when I was little my family had a specific plan for when there were severe tornado warnings. I always got really excited about bad weather and tornados. Not only was it so cool to see the crazy weather outside, but we got to run over to the neighbors because they had a basement and hang out eating chips, drinking pop, and watching cartoons until the storm passed. I mean what kid wouldn’t love that?
We do not really get tornados here in Las Vegas, but fire’s are a concern just as they are anywhere, and creating a fire escape plan has been on my to-do list for a while. Since October is National Fire Prevention Month I decided it was the perfect time to create a fire safety checklist and have a family meeting to create a plan incase of an emergency. My girls are little, but I have been able to get Aria involved so she at least understands that when certain things happen, like momma pulling out the clip board and the fireman hat, that means it is time to follow each other safety out of the house.
The First Alert® fire safety kit has a badge and checklist, but one of the devices that is really important to me is the carbon monoxide alarm. This is one scary danger that is invisible and can cause harm before you ever notice it. The goal is to install a smoke and carbon monoxide alarm on each floor of the house to assure the best protection. Did you know that the #1 cause of fires in homes is from cooking mistakes? Also incase you were not sure, because we never know how long to wait in between switching out the batteries, it is every six months! Set a reminder on your phone! Don’t forget the obvious fire extinguishers too, we have one in our kitchen, but recently got another one to keep upstairs too.
So the fire escape plan I created has two safe exists for each room in our home. This was tricky to figure out, but I am glad I did it because I will not forget it! The next step was to dedicate a specific meeting spot outside of the house a good distance away. We chose out neighborhood mailbox because it is a walk from the house and a marker we all know well. Aria thinks it is even safer to hide in the package boxes…goofball!
Finally we created a schedule on the family calendar to practice our fire escape checklist once a month and at that same time test all of our alarms to make sure they are all in excellent working condition. This has actually become a really fun activity for our family to do together, and Aria loves to “pretend play” the fires escape from time to time and sharing the steps with Ella!