Teach your children about fire safety

Making sure that your children are aware of the aspects of fire safety is incredibly important. They need to be able to know what to do in the event of a fire, and teaching them about the different points of fire safety can save lives. From knowing when to push fire alarms to preventing fires in the first place, there are several considerations that need to be considered to keep kids safe.

Make your fire plans kid-friendly

Although you need to make sure your children know all the information about fire safety, bombarding them with too many technical terms can be confusing and possibly scary for them.

Consider drawing out a fire plan, getting them to help you by suggesting things they may already know about fire safety. This is a good indicator of knowing what they do and don’t understand about fire protection and it is important that you get all the necessary information across. But it is also equally important that you do it in a way that is easy for them to remember.

Explaining the range of fire safety signs is an easy and effective way to get kids interested in the different aspects of fire safety.

Flammable materials

Teach your kids about the different materials that can present a fire hazard in your home. Run tests with them to see if they can identify the materials that are hazardous and where they should/should not be left to avoid a fire. Preventing the fire in the first place is the first step to proper fire safety.

Using a fire extinguisher

For smaller children, using a fire extinguisher may be almost impossible as extinguishers  can be heavy and cumbersome, but for slightly older children, understanding the operation of an extinguisher can be the difference between a fire spreading or not. Using the acronym ”PASS”is a simple way to memorise how to operate a fire extinguisher:

• Pull pin
• Aim towards the floor
• Squeeze lever
• Sweep nozzle from left to right

“‘The Fire Triangle”

‘The Fire Triangle’ is a simple way to help children understand what causes a fire. It displays the three elements that are necessary to ignite a fire; heat, fuel and an oxidizing agent (e.g. oxygen). Teach them that removing one of the elements will prevent or extinguish the fire; for example a blanket will counteract the oxidizing agent and the fire can be extinguished.

Different types of fire

While it may be common for children to think that water will extinguish all fires, this obviously is not the case and it is important that children know about the different types of fires and the most effective ways to extinguish them. Help them learn to identify the different kinds of fire extinguishers and which type of fire they are designed for. Test them to help them match up different types of fires with their designated extinguishers.

Above are just a few ways to help you teach your children about fire hazards in the home and how to act in the event of a fire. By presenting these tips to them in a friendly, fun, simple manner, they will find them easy to remember and put into action if such an emergency does arise. Having proper fire safety knowledge can save lives, and there is a huge variety of top-of-the-range fire safety equipment to help support the knowledge of fire protection.

City Fire Protection is one of the leading London installers of fire alarms and extinguishers.