Planning Your Fire Escape
Before you can practice your fire escape plan, you have to develop one and you have to teach it to your children.
Fire can spread rapidly through your home, leaving you as little as two minutes to escape safely once the alarm sounds. Your ability to get out depends on advance warning from smoke alarms, and advance planning—a home fire escape plan that everyone in your family is familiar with and has practiced.
Walk through your home and inspect all possible exits and escape routes. The Office of Children's Services uses an escape plan grid that helps resource families plan their escape routes. You can open and print at by clicking on Fire Escape Planner.
As you walk through your house, make sure escape routes are clear and doors and windows can be opened easily. Sometime windows in Alaska freeze up and jam in winter time, so check to make sure that all windows that are used as escape routes can be opened easily by children. Make sure smoke alarms, fire extinguishers and fire escape ladders are working and you and your children know how to use them.
Choose two escape routes out of each room, in case fire or smoke blocks an exit.
If your escape plan includes an escape ladder, practice using it from a first floor window. Store the ladder near the window, in an easily accessible location. You don't want to have to search for it during a fire!
Choose an outside meeting place a safe distance in front of your home where everyone can meet after they've escaped.
Have everyone memorize the emergency phone number of the fire department in order to call from a neighbor's home or a cell phone once outside.
Under no circumstances should you ever go back into a burning building. If someone is missing, inform the fire department dispatcher when you call. Firefighters have the skills and equipment to perform rescues.
