Preparation and quick action can be a matter of life and death in the instance of a home blaze.
Having the right house fire safety strategy in place can help to keep you and your family safe. This can involve a number of basics but also one surprisingly simple step.
A better understanding of how and when house fires happen can keep you safer.
Many people don’t realize that about half of all house fires occur between the hours of 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. For most people, this means that we’re unconscious throughout the majority of that time. This means that we would not be awake to be able to identify the situation and act as soon as it happens.
This is, of course, a scary thought. Therefore, in the name of house fire safety, we need to make the right choices to buy time and ensure the path will be clear for an escape. Fire experts and a recent study agree that there is one simple thing you can do – beyond having working smoke detectors and knowing your escape routes – to significantly boost your chances of survival. That simple step is just a matter of shutting your bedroom door when you head to bed.
A new study shows that closing the bedroom door at night can be important to house fire safety.
The UL Firefighter Safety Research Institute (FSRI) data analysis looked into a decade of statistics. Research over the last ten years has shown that shutting the door overnight while you’re asleep may have a “potentially life-saving impact.” This step can help in a number of different ways.
To start, closing a bedroom door helps to reduce the amount of readily available oxygen for the fire. Since a fire needs oxygen to grow and spread, reduced oxygen will slow that process. Moreover, closing the door can also offer you increased protection. That additional barrier can give you extra time to find an alternate escape through a window. If you have a fire escape, this can be very helpful as it will make sure that the fire doesn’t reach you as fast as other parts of the home, so you can get out.
According to research, a room with a closed door can be up to 900 degrees cooler than one in the same situation but with an open door. Clearly, this is a major and important difference for anyone inside the room. This one house fire safety step can make all the difference you and your family needs to get out and survive a blaze.
