Fire Prevention Week is October 5 -11

While it’s essential to always think about fire safety, Fire Prevention Week­—October 5-11—is a good time to make sure you and your family prevent a tragedy from happening at your home.

A 2006 fire in my suburban New York town illustrates just how quickly disaster can strike: A local family had gone out to dinner, leaving behind a teenaged houseguest. After the kid started to heat up some food in a skillet, he went upstairs to take a shower. The teenager forgot about the food, and within minutes, the charming Arts & Craft home was in flames. The house and everything in it were destroyed; luckily the teenager escaped uninjured.

Last year, fires in homes across the United States killed about 2,900 people and injured 14,000 others, according to the National Fire Protection Association. Cooking fires are the leading cause of fires in the home and fire injuries, according to the NFPA.

About one-third of cooking fires happen because nobody is keeping an eye on the stove. So stay in the kitchen whenever you fry, grill, or broil food, and when you leave the room, even briefly, turn off the stove. In other words, to quote from the NFPA’s current fire-safety campaign, “don’t be a doofus.”
Fire Prevention Week is a good time to develop a fire escape plan and practice it with your family. Also follow our basic safety tips for smoke and carbon-monoxide alarms and the advice on the NFPA site.—Kimberly Janeway

Essential information: Read our buyer’s guide to smoke and carbon-monoxide alarms.

Comments

[Marlene Gundlach]

I think fire safety week is such an important educational tool. We took our boys for the open house at our local fire department last week and they still remember using the fire safety/smoke house at safety town.

[home security]

Tested and failed. Removed power from unit during delay period. No phone call. No police response. I disconnected the phone line during the delay and waited through the alarm on the next try. No police response. No calls with challenge questions on my cell phone. I’m wondering what the quality of the low cost monitoring companies is. I am spending over $30.00 a month on ADT, but when my alarm went off, it still took the police 4 hours to come to my house to check.
If home alarms are such a low priority to the police, why spend the money on ADT; what is the main difference between ADT’s monitoring and the lower cost companies? Don’t they all just call the police if an alarm goes off? most crooks are low lifes looking for a quick score. Sure the “cat burglar” has skills and will be able to defeat almost any sound system. The main effect an alarm has is to detour the criminal from even attempting the break in. Most criminals who break a window or kick a door in and hear the alarm go off will just run away quick. Sure they can ripp the unit off the wall but they still can’t be sure a signal wan’t sent. I have the glass-break feature. It sends a distress signal instantly. Sure the system posted above may not be ideal but should work well enough. I also agree a cellualr unit is the best way to go…