If you woke up in the night and your house was on fire what's your plan?
Some family of ours recently had this situation and it got us thinking about our plan. One toddler and soon to be a new baby would need saving, as well as our dog in a crate downstairs. Got smoke alarms that we check regularly but they probably give a false sense of security if you don't have a plan for what to do if it actually goes off!
Do you have extinguishers? Rope ladders for getting out of bedroom windows? A fire drill?
Plan, get out, get in car, drive to hotel.
There is a FBU strike tomorrow night and NYE as well.
[s]Towels in room to stuff under door gap(s), fire extinguisher near landing, keys always in front door and hanging next to rear door.
Hang out the window furthest away from fire and wait. Worse case jump- its 12foot.[/s]
We have very sensitive (proper) fire detectors on both floors.
Out the back bedroom window and onto utility room roof.
If fires blocking that path then the smoke alarms havnt worked at all and ill take my chances jumping out the front window.
Got 2 smoke alarms on the mains - one up and one down and a heat sensor in the kitchen all linked + battery smoke alarms in the attic spaces ( free from firebrigade!)
Smoke detectors in every room, ground floor flat so can just climb out the windows.
We have very sensitive (proper) fire detectors on both floors.
What does that even mean hora.
I suspect that he means mains powered ones rather than battery powered ones.
We have very sensitive (proper) fire detectors on both floors.
Same here, and they get tested whenever I cook 🙂 Fires can progress pretty bloody quickly though.
Blimey, hadn't even thought about attic smoke detectors.
Was staying at my folks' a couple of christmases back and they had an electrical fire from an old electric blaney- pure luck I found it early so it was easy enough to deal (though I think as firefighting apparatus goes, "a blanket which is also on fire" ranks poorly). Smoke and furniture damage but nothing structural, very lucky.
But afterwards, realised the smoke alarms never went off- both dead. No extinguishers or anything in the house... Funnily enough the whole family ended up down the shops after christmas buying kit.
They are very sensitive. If you even grill bacon (WITHOUT) burning it- in the upstairs room away you'll trigger an alarm.
Reminds me of the heroine in London a few years ago. Fire takes hold in house, family beaten back from rescuing a trapped child. Woman stops car outside of house, runs in, upstairs, back down and hands child to people outside. Goes to hospital with them to look over child who suffered bad burns.
She leaves without saying her name. I think the Sun tried tracking her down to no avail.
What a ****ing hero that woman was.
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P155 on it??
P155 on it??
With the volume of my usual middle of the night pee that may actually be a feasible option!
Jesus what the oh ffff Jesus Jesus Jesus okay okay hold the oh my god what the ffffffffuuuuu mother
fire detecters fitted up and downstairs.
windows open fully to enable us to climb out
dog dies if fire is downstairs...... 😥
Ah found: http://www.guardian-series.co.uk/news/9119488.LEYTON__Heroic_woman_rescues_baby_from_burning_house/
More balls than most of us put together.
Hands up it was our friendly forum firefighter who both gave me the attic alarms and told me to stick them there ....
You want to be fitting mains linked alarms as a minimum these days.
And ideally you want combined ionizing and optical sensor type ( detects different types of smokes from different burning materials) as well as a heat sensor in your kitchen.
Optical smoke detectors are more sensitive (& expensive) than the more common ionisation type. We have both types and a detector in every room.
We regularly test our smoke detectors by accidently setting fire to the sheet of paper we hold over the fire trying to get it going.....
Ours are fairly new and mains linked. I think they are good ones.
Tricky getting out of our upstairs windows as it's quite a drop (if it was just me it'd be ok, but wife and kids would be tricky.) Thinking rope ladder of some sort. Maybe throw a mattress out the window!
Jesus what the oh ffff Jesus Jesus Jesus okay okay hold the oh my god what the ffffffffuuuuu mother
^^^ my current plan!
I've delegated this sort of stuff to the cat to sort out.
It's told me it's on top of the situation.
Having set myself and the house on fire in recent months, I can confirm my standard reaction is PANIC!
Never really thought about it. I guess I'd grab an arm full of records and jump out of the window on to the hedge 🙂
I know my smoke alarm works because it's been fitted about a yard from the cooker so it goes off every time I cook a steak.
Rescue bikes grab beer on way out watch the place burn with said beer.
we advise people to close doors at night and have a phone in their bedroom. a closed door can keep a fire at bay for half hour or so. once the alarms have sounded you [i]should[/i] have enough time to ring the fire service if youre trapped and tell them where you are in the house. they should be there within a few minutes.
jumping out of windows shouldnt be necessary, but if it is, then chuck pillows and bedding (mattress if possible) onto the ground, then hang from the window to minimise the drop.
jumping out of windows shouldnt be necessary, but if it is, then chuck pillows and bedding (mattress if possible) onto the ground, then hang from the window to minimise the drop.
Ah ok. I was going to go with let partner/son go first then cushion impact.
Id advice against hanging from your window if its a dormer , sliding down tiles and clipping the guttering with your balls and chin will hurt.
If it's anything like the last time it happened I expect I'll get woken up by the alarm, begrudgingly stumble out of bed with an epic hangover, get dressed, wander into the kitchen, stand at the sink drinking a pint of water, notice the smoke pouring out of the roof of the restaurant below. RUN LIKE ****! Then spend the night sat on the benches of the grotty Camden pub opposite and watch 5 fire engine loads of blokes smash the crap out of the restaurant in an attempt to put the fire out before it took down the whole building. Thankfully they did.
I live in a ground floor flat now.
Your house is on fire... what's your plan?
Get out quick ...
Do you have extinguishers?
Yes, a small one but in this building we have one every corner. We have smoke and heat detectors all over the flat.
Rope ladders for getting out of bedroom windows? A fire drill?
On the ground floor so just jump out from the windows. Yes, we do drill.
Rope ladders for getting out of bedroom windows? A fire drill?
Nope ... on the ground flood. Nope.
I'm hoping that a combination of primal instinct and logic will kick in; I'll collect the dog and send it and the missus downstairs and out the front door, while I dither over whether it's advisable to wait for the NAS to power down before bringing it out, and whether I can fit my amp, PC and 2 bikes under my arms on the way out.
I suspect it doesn't work quite like that though, and so running around yelling "fire fire fire!" before jumping across to next door's flat roof will be the plan.
Multiple exit points in our house. One upstairs onto the utility room roof or from our bedroom onto the conservatory.
Otherwise I reckon I could jump from a front window. Not sure if the wife could. Still, she's had a good innings.
Got 2 smoke alarms on the mains - one up and one down and a heat sensor in the kitchen all linked + battery smoke alarms in the attic spaces ( free from firebrigade!)
Free from me
Buy blinds get smoke alarms free 😉
Otherwise I reckon I could jump from a front window. Not sure if the wife could. Still, she's had a good innings.
😀
Kids spread across 3 floors, have taught and drilled them into how to get out of the windows (there are safe escape routes for all that way). Only problem is they seemed right keen to try it out ...
Warning re: free alarms from the fire service...best fit them yourself / don't let them fit them using the strong adhesive (smeared adhesive on alarm and push alarm to ceiling with plunger to set so no ladders needed)...the non replaceable battery doesn't last anything like the claimed 5 years and so you have to replace the whole alarm...and also replace the plaster it rips from the ceiling when removed (Good adhesive though).
Traditional screws in this service
ground floor so jump out of window (or more realistically walk out the front door), but would take my bike off the wall first. and maybe my stash. and the GF.
Anybody else have important documents in a fire/water safe?
Get out and call for help.
Anybody else have important documents in a fire/water safe?
Yep, mainly so if some scroute breaks in he can't run off with all the bank statements / passports etc.
Assuming we're unable to walk out of the front door then our climbing gear is stored under the bed. Clove hitch to the bed frame, rope out the window and abseil down to the ground, walk to other side of the road and use phone to check insurance is up to date.
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I was thinking of this when we moved into our new place, partly because the doors need the keys in to unlock them so at night we need to make sure the keys are in a known place. Although it is a bungalow with nice big windows so they are easy exists too.
Once we know each other are okay out attention would turn to the animals and then probably by laptop if I could get to it.
We have a mains alarm system in my flat and the bungalow with backup battery smoke/CO alarm in the living room of the flat.
Shut all doors, and get out,ring fire brigade.
and wait.
Where is the CO alarm positioned, on the ceiling?
