Children as Young as Three Should Be Taught How To Escape a Home Fire

2/28/2020 (Permalink)

Young woman doing low crawl

If only life had a pause button. When the smoke detectors go off in Montgomery, IL, there’s no time to review safety procedures. If you’re blocked from reaching your children, their response will be largely decided by the training and preparedness you’ve practiced as part of your kid's safety.

Three Baby Steps To Escaping a Fire

The three most successful basic actions you can teach your kids to know in a home fire are

• The bed roll
  
• The fire crawl
  
• The door check
  
  

Put simply, stay low and think slow for the sake of kid's safety. Everyone should act expeditiously, but without plenty of practice, most people – and especially children – are likely to panic if they don’t calm their thinking down first.

Roll Out of Bed
Since heat rises during a fire, you need to stay low. When the smoke detectors go off, children should know not to stand up. Instead, they should turn over until they are at the edge of the bed and facing the floor. Then they can slide off the bed and begin crawling towards the nearest designated fire escape.

Understand the Fire Crawl
The crawl of first choice is the dog walk. Get down on elbows and knees, keeping your face as close to the floor as is reasonably possible. This gets you low enough to avoid the worst heat and smoke but allows most people to move relatively quickly toward an exit.
The second choice is the low crawl. This is what soldiers use when under fire. Your body is almost entirely on the floor with your head raised only as much as necessary to see where you’re going.

Check Those Doors!
If an escape route goes through a door, teach your kids to always check it with the back of their hand before opening. If it’s hot, find another exit!
When you practice the fire drill with children during warm weather in Montgomery, IL, it can be like a game for them. If you have any questions about kid's safety, ask a professional fire restoration company for tips and advice.