Important Fire Safety Tips to Always Keep in Mind

Whenever you have an open flame burning around your house, it’s important to make sure you maintain good fire safety practices. If you fail to practice good fire safety, a small flame could quickly turn into a large blaze.

Here are just a few fire safety tips you should follow that will help you practice good fire safety all year round, regardless of whether you have anything burning at the time:

• Test your smoke alarms: Your smoke alarms are what alert you to the presence of a fire that has grown out of control. Smoke alarms save lives, so it’s important to make sure they are functional at all times. The standard is to check your alarms once a month, and to replace the batteries twice a year. However, there are some types of smoke alarms that have batteries that are not meant to be replaced, and are capable of lasting a decade or longer. Regardless, you should still check the functionality of the alarms on a regular basis to give yourself some peace of mind.
• Always keep flames attended: You should never leave a room where there is an open flame. All it takes is a single bump or wrong step, and suddenly that flame could become seriously problematic. Even if it’s just a tiny candle flame, you should always be in the room with it. If you must leave the room, extinguish the flame. You can always relight it when you return.
• Have fire extinguishers around the home: You should always have fire extinguishers accessible in high-risk areas of your home, such as the kitchen, and should aim to have a fire extinguisher on every floor so there is one within reasonable access should a fire occur on any level. In addition, you need to know how to use the fire extinguisher. Pull the pin, aim the extinguisher at the base of the fire, push the handle in and then use a sweeping motion back and forth at the base of the fire to extinguish it. Make sure you regularly check these extinguishers so you can determine if they’re still able to be used—the arrow should be within the green indicator.
• Have a fire plan: Put together a fire plan that includes where you will go if a fire happens, how you will alert everyone in the building, what you will prioritize grabbing on your way out and how you will stay safe. It’s good to have a map of the building so you know the escape routes from every individual room.
• Stop, drop and roll: It’s something we’re taught from the time we are small: if you ever catch fire, you should stop, drop and roll to put the fire out. Doing this could save your life, and prevent the fire from spreading any further as well.

For more information about how you can adhere to good fire safety practices, we encourage you to contact our team at Anchor Safety Inc. to get more fire safety tips.

Categorised in: Fire Safety Tips

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