Practice Your Home Fire Escape Plan

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Creating and practicing a home fire escape plan is simple. Follow the steps below to make sure everyone in your home is prepared and knows what to do in case of a home fire.

Make an Escape Plan

A man crawling low under smoke toward an exit.

Children and Fire Safety

It is important to have a plan when there are children in your home. Children may become very scared and need clear direction and help getting out of the house. They may not know how to escape or what to do unless an adult shows them.

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Conduct a Home Fire Drill

Fires can start anywhere in the home and at any time, so run through the plan at different times of the day or night and practice different ways out.

A father holding a stop watch, running a fire drill as mother and son run toward the safety spot.

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Step 1: Know where to go. Review your safe meeting place. Explain to your kids that when the smoke alarm beeps, they need to get out of the house quickly and meet at that safety spot.

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Step 2: Check your smoke alarms. Test your smoke alarms with your kids so they know the sound.

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Step 3: Do the drill. Have kids head to their bedrooms and wait for the drill to begin. Assign adults to help young children. Put one adult in charge of sounding the smoke alarm and running the drill. Next, sound the smoke alarm, start the timer and have everyone book it to the safety spot. Once everyone gets to the safe meeting place stop the timer. If you all made it in under two minutes, you each get an imaginary gold medal. If not, give it another try. In a real fire, get to the safe meeting place, then call 9-1-1 and keep everyone close until firefighters arrive.

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