by Heidi Green
November 05, 2009

The start of the new school year means many things, including a fresh influx of fire safety information from firefighters at school and subsequently, my children at home. Between my son in first-grade and my daughter in her second year of preschool, I’m being double-teamed. It’s important information, I know. But to be perfectly honest, I hate it.

It’s not that I don’t respect the issue. In fact, I’ve long been afraid of fire. It’s sudden, it’s unexpected, and it’s all too often deadly. For those who are burned, recovery can be a painful, even torturous process. It is awful to think about.

Even the smoke can be deadly. I was in high school when a favorite teacher and her teenager died in a house fire that started in their television set. It was downstairs; they were upstairs. Although they woke up and tried to escape, they were overcome by the smoke on their stairway.

Is it possible that I’ve become even more afraid of fire since my children were born? Almost certainly. Holding a newborn in one’s arms, it is natural to feel as though their very survival depends on their parents’ care. It does. Life is fragile, and the protective urge is strong. There are a lot of dangers I can see, but fire seems like one I cannot prepare for. The very thought of a fire in our home makes my throat close and my stomach feel leaden.

Be prepared
As scary as it is to think about a fire in the home, we must—absolutely must—do what we can to help make sure the children would be ready “just in case.” This became all too clear for me over this past weekend.

Fire officials recommend that we have smoke detectors on each floor of our house (including the basement), and that we change the batteries in our smoke detectors each time we change our clocks (in the spring with the start of Daylight Savings Time, and again in the fall when we return to Daylight Standard Time).

As we changed the batteries at our house yesterday, we discovered that the first-floor smoke detector was broken. The detector is old; it came with the house when we bought it. But the fact that it hasn’t been working for who-knows-how-long was a sobering wake-up call.

So, although Fire Safety Month is now behind us, I will be sitting down with the rest of the family this week to review what they know about fire safety and develop an escape plan. It’s a classic case of “better safe than sorry.” Every family should have a fire safety plan. Here are my resources for you to do the same:

• Home Safety Council: This organization provides a wealth of information related to home safety in general and fire safety in particular, including several videos and how-to tips.

• Elementary-age resources: This site is a good source of worksheets and lesson ideas for teaching fire safety in the school, but also potentially helpful in the home.

• Sparky the Fire Dog: An initiative of the National Fire Protection Association, this interactive, child-friendly site provides games, cartoons, activities, and information about fire trucks. Not quite all of the information is about fire; for example, the site now includes a page of instructions for making a turkey craft.

• FireSafety.gov: This site provides information from several U.S. government agencies. The basic idea is: get a smoke alarm, make an escape plan, practice fire safety, and consider residential fire sprinklers. A section for kids includes coloring pages, puzzles and games.

• Fire safety for babies and toddlers: A child under the age of five is twice as likely to die in a residential fire as other people are; the “Prepare. Practice. Prevent the Unthinkable” Campaign aims to draw parents’ attention to this important issue.

• National Fire Protection Association: This fire prevention advocacy group supports research, training, education and policy development. While this is not a child-friendly site, parents may be interested in the Fire Sprinkler Initiative and other efforts.

“Mom,” Katie just said to me as she put her school-made paper fire helmet on my head, “You be the Fire Chief.” I don’t want to be that. Frankly, I’m feeling bad that we were relying, in part, on a broken smoke detector and that we don’t already have a formal escape plan in place. But I do want to keep my family safe from fire—and I am learning what I can do to make that happen.

Heidi Green has been researching and writing about women’s and children health since she moved to Pittsburgh more than 10 years ago. She is also a children’s book reviewer in her spare time. She is mom to Ben, Katie, Sam, and Max.