Heard a veteran  Fire  Officer/Commander  speak to a group at our church this morning. His best wisdom:

1. Bed warmers /electric blankets are not meant to be slept on when they’re on. Turn ’em on half an hour before retiring, then turn off when you’re about to go to sleep…

2. Best  fire  extinguisher to have somewhere in your kitchen – a  fire  blanket (made from glass!) – to throw over the  fire  and starve it of oxygen… $9.95 in Bunnings or your favorite hardware  store…

3. Speaking of starving a  fire  of oxygen he said he closes every door in his house when there’s no one there: a  fire  in one closed room burns very slowly but an inflow of air from outside the room will accelerate it dramatically…

4. Leave keys in deadlocks when you’re inside… (and he suggests also when you go out – in case you forget)

5. MOST IMPORTANT: If the  fire  in your house is not able to be extinguished (by a blanket, etc.) get out of the house and don’t go back in to fetch photos, pets etc.

6. These days there’s thousands of varieties of plastic in most homes – and the fumes are deadly. The wisdom about crawling? He’s found dead bodies of people who tried that and got trapped by fumes, or were elderly, and couldn’t get up off the floor. The crawling idea apparently is relevant to smoke but not to plastic fumes… So ‘Stop, drop and roll’ might need to be modified…

7. Clean grease off stoves, clean lint from your washing machine, switch off appliances not being used at the wall…

8. Don’t leave cooking unattended. If you leave the kitchen to answer the phone, wear a tea towel over your shoulder and carry a wooden spoon or something to remind you that something’s cooking back there…

9. Put an extra smoke alarm in bedrooms where people sleep with the door closed – they’re a bargain compared to a life… Replace all battery-powered smoke alarms every ten years… And check ’em regularly (with a broom handle if they’re high up)… Here’s what the book says: Without a working smoke alarm you are * 57% more likely to suffer property loss and damage * 26% more likely to suffer serious injury * four times more likely to die in a residential  fire  than people with working smoke alarms…

10. Change the batteries when you change to summer-time – ie. once a year…

11. Be very wary of heat bags – they dry out, and are very combustible in microwaves… Follow the makers’ instructions (and add water when you’re heating them)…

12. Check powerboards regularly for damage… and avoid using double adaptors (oops)…

13. Practise your escape plan. (Eg. in Victoria when there are bushfires the strongest/worst winds come from the north – so shelter on the southern side of public buildings etc.)… And lots more… Want to add any???

COMMENTS from a few Facebookers:   There’s still a huge number of people who smoke in bed, in front of the tv etc and fall asleep without extinguishing it.

Unattended candles are another one.

There’s also a theory that some people can sleep through fire/smoke alarms (my niece can sleep through an earthquake in SF, so I reckon a smoke alarm would be small potatoes for her)

Make sure that all smoke detectors are connected. So if the one at the back of the house go’s off, so will the one at the front that is out side your bedroom door!!