Five Star Safety - Fire Safety Tip

Fire Safety Tip

National Fire Safety Week is October 9-15, 205. Do you know all you need to know about fire safety? Test yourself. There are a couple of lessons about fire safety and home safety tips in the following stories. See if you can figure them out.

One of Jamie's Fire Stories

Once upon a time, a 20-something girl named Jamie, her roommate Stephanie and Stephanie's friend Amy decided to go out on a Saturday night. Amy was the designated driver that night, and on the way home, the girls decided to stop at Hardee's to grab some breakfast from the drive-thru. When they got home, Jamie decided to wash her face before she ate her biscuits and gravy, but she didn't want them to get cold, so she put the bag on top of her halogen lamp in her bedroom to keep the food warm. After washing her face, she returned to the room only to find a strange flickering coming from the lamp. She knew something was wrong, but since she had been drinking a little, it took her a second to figure out that the food was on fire. She thought, "Okay, there's something I have to do..." Then she remembered the most basic fire safety tip: water puts a fire out. So she ran and got a cup of water to throw on the fire. When she got back, she stopped in the doorway to her bedroom. "There's something else.....what is it?" she thought. Then she remembered she should unplug the lamp before putting the water on the fire. Soon the fire was out. The whole time, Stephanie had been completely passed out in her own bedroom on her bed. Amy came to see what was going on because the apartment was full of smoke. She told Jamie to open all the windows while she took the lamp to the dumpster. Then they tried to wake Stephanie, but she didn't wake up. She was, however, breathing, so they put her on the floor because they remembered the fire safety tipfire safety tip they learned in grade school: smoke rises. They figured if they put her on the floor and opened the windows in her bedroom, she'd be safe. And she was.

The irony of this situation was that the smoke alarm never went off. Why? Because it had been chirping, which indicates the battery is low and needs to be replaced. The girls had taken the smoke alarm down and put it on the coffee table, but each thought the other was getting a battery, and at the time of the small fire, neither had replaced the battery yet. Fortunately, this fire wasn't worse.

Another One of Jamie's Fire Stories

About a year and a half after the above incident, Jamie had her own apartment--no roommates. But she had been out late one night, and she was very tired, and a little tipsy after her friend dropped her off. So she decided to make a bag of noodles that she had. While they were cooking, she laid on the couch and started watching t.v. In a few minutes, she had gone to sleep. When she woke up, her apartment was filled with smoke. She was confused at first, but then she remembered her noodles and ran to the kitchen. The burner was red-hot, and the pan had ashes in it. Through it all, her smoke detector never went off, so the next day she checked the battery, but it was fine. She replaced it anyway though, just to be safe. This was one fire safety tip she learned from the previous fire incident.

What Fire Safety Tip Did You Learn from Jamie?

Here's what you should have learned from Jamie's fire stories:

Fire Safety Tip #1: Don't cook when you've been drinking.

Fire Safety Tip #2: Don't use a halogen lamp to keep anything warm, and don't put anything on top of a halogen lamp.

Fire Safety Tip #3: Make sure your smoke detectors are in good working condition. (This could also be considered a home safety tip.)

We hope you've learned something about this page about fire safety tips. Sure, some of them are probably obvious, but maybe you learned something new, too.

Online fire safety tip

Government fire safety tip