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(48), Home fire safety
Home fire safety first of
all
Dear readers, let us talk
in this article, about fire safety, because it is one of the most important
things to know. You see, there are times in our lives, when something dreadful
happens, and suddenly we become aware, that we could have prevented that
dreadful happening, if we had been more careful. Or if we would have planned
those things that could have prevented that event to happen; so, sometimes we
might even blame ourselves for what has happened.
Anyhow in this article, we
are going to write a few things about fire safety, and other things as well, because
we would like to point out these dangers, we could also be able to give some
advice, how to avoid some dangers wherever we can. So, this article is going to
be a bit of this and that, but we will be talking mostly about fire safety.
The reason, we are writing
about this fire issue today, it is because there has been a fire in a street
nearby where I live, and although the house was badly damaged by fire, this
time the occupants were lucky enough to run out of this house, even though they
lost all their personal belongings. So, this makes me think about what could
have been done to prevent this fire, or what should we do in case of fire. Well
these things are not easy to answer, perhaps we need to have a plan how to
escape, but let us look at the many aspect that could help us.
I believe that, we should make
this issue of preventing home fires in our lives a priority, or any type of
fire that puts in danger people and property as well, because it is very
important to do that. You see, we all ask questions after some tragic event has
happened, when properties are burned out and sometimes even loss of life
happens; the worse and painful part of it all, it is that it could have been
prevented or minimized. Of course, these events become more painful and sad
when people die; but these things happen only because people did not know
enough how to prevent the fire, and because they did not have a plan how to
escape it, so, they became trapped and perished, we are going to say something
about how we could avoid being trapped in a house fire, if we plan these safety
things properly.
You see, if everybody of us
can contribute some of our life accumulated knowledge how to avoid the worst
part of these tragic events, then that person has done his best and this is
what I am trying to do here. I hate to say that when we hear news like these,
we think that something is very wrong there, and we believe that there should
have been a way to prevent these tragic happenings, especially when people die
in a fire.
Now what made me write this
article here for the first time, it is that I have witnessed a few fires during
my life, including the fire that has happened recently, there was this fire in
the street where we live, in the street where we live there have been other
fire years ago, and an old man died in the fire and it was very sad. What
happened then made the owners demolish the house and for a few years we have
this vacant block of land, which is an eye sore in the street, we hope that the
owners will soon do something about it and sell it, or build something new,
because we are sick and tired to see this very unpleasant views of it.
Recently there has been
another fire not far from it, but this time the owners managed to escape
unhurt, at least this is the good news of this other house fire. Anyhow I am
writing this article also to say my views, and in a small way say something
that could help prevent a tragedy. So, if you read this entire article, you
will see my point of views how to leave a way to escape in case of fire. So,
let us discuss what could be done, because I believe that we need to plan home
fire safety.
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Home fire safety and other things
Our intension here is that we are going to
talk about home fire safety, but we are going to talk about other things as
well, because this is what we need to do, so, let us continue. I believe that
it is always the same, as soon as something dreadful happens in our lives, and
there is loss of property or even life, we start asking ourselves whether we
have done the right things, and whether that tragedy could have been avoided,
but then it is usually too late for whatever has already happened. We should be
looking after ourselves and our own lives with all our personal faculties
because we are constantly exposed to many dangers including fire, some of these
dangers may result in being hurt or even death. Therefore, we should look where
these dangers may come from and plan to avoid them whenever and wherever
possible.
We would like to bring to our reader’s
attention, that what is going to be written in this article, is what has
happened recently, at the time when this article was written for the first time,
and that should be kept in mind while reading this article, and a few other
things that have happened in those times.
In our lives one of the main dangers is fire
and water, in facts there are sayings in many languages; God help us from water
and fire! You see these two elements that are so friendly when they are in the
right proportion, they suddenly can become very dangerous and life threatening,
so, we must guard ourselves from these dangerous two elements and from other
dangers. Today we cannot help thinking about what has just happened in Arizona
USA.
You see while I was about to edit my hub
about fire safety, which I have written a while ago, I heard the sad news and I
felt so sorry for the loss of life that this fire has caused; there are no
words to describe the sad fact that 19 people have lost their lives, while they
were doing their best to control this fire in the country of Arizona USA. Our
thoughts of sympathy and our prayers go to their families and all those people
that are closely involved.
This tragic event goes to prove that fires
are very dangerous even to the fire experts that have been trained to control
the fires. So, we need to be very careful about fire safety throughout our
lives. To give our readers some ideas of what this fire was like, I am going to
post some links in this article, so that we will be able to have a record of
what has happened, in the hope that we would remember this tragedy and be more
careful next time, if we have to light a fire in the open in the future. I am
saying this not because this fire was started from an open fire, since it is
believed that it was started from a lightning; however we should not light
fires in the open when it is very hot and dry, as these tragedies can happen
very fast when it is hot, as it was the case when this event has happened.
Here-under are some links that tell us about
this tragic fire:
01 Jul 2013
01 Jul 2013
I hope that these links above work for you,
today and in the future, so that they would remind us of these sad facts about
dangerous fires. Of course there are many other fire accidents happening in the
world even as we speak, but it is not our intention to report them here,
because we would like to go back to what we had already written before about
fire safety and other dangers that we are exposed to during our lives.
Other dangerous things
Other dangerous things that we should think
about.
As we all know during our lives we are
exposed to dangers that sometimes may even kill us, anyhow, today there are a
couple of dangers that come to our mind more often than the others, because
they are very often on the news, apart from the fires in the houses, there
could be also other fires that could be prevented, one of these is when people
go out drinking and then they drive when drunk, of course very often on the way
home or wherever they are going they cause an accident, they smash their car
and perhaps get hurt; if they cause a major accident not only they can get
hurt, but they can also cause damage, injury or death to other people and when
the accident is severe the car can even catch fire and the occupants may die in
the burning car, which is really a terrible way to die.
Now that I have written about the dangers of
driving when drunk, just because this seems to happen very often and seems to
be on the news more than other dangerous behaviours; but as we all know there
are other things that may endanger our lives, just because we don’t pay much
attention to what is happening around us so to speak, but the fire is one
danger that we really should try to avoid, it is too dangerous.
Therefore, whatever we do and wherever we go,
we should look after our own safety first of all, it is not going to do us any
good if something happens to us, and then, we try to blame somebody else for
what has happened to us, we really should try to do our best to prevent
anything bad happening to us, we should also be alert all the time if possible
and anything suspicious should be checked out as soon as possible. Of course,
there are things that we cannot control, and whatever they are should be looked
at and we should be careful, when we come close to these dangers. Just to
mention another danger that some of us might not think about, let me show you
what just happened a few days ago not far from where I am living, when a house
caught fire, and then see if there is anything that can be done to minimize the
danger of our own lives, since we might find ourselves easily in the same
position one day, as we all live in houses and sometimes houses can catch fire
and burn and just like the occupant of the car, people can also die in a house
fire, but there are things that can be done to avoid that, or at least minimize
the loss of life.
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Think fire safety first in wooden houses
In this article, we have mentioned many
things about fires and other dangers, so, this article now covers many things.
But above all, now we would like to talk about the importance of fire safety in
the houses and particularly in wooden houses, because they can catch fire and
burn more quickly than houses built with bricks and cement. Therefore, we
should ask ourselves, what should we do to minimize the danger for the house
occupants? And also, what else can be done to make it safer for the occupants
to escape?
Dear readers, as I said at the beginning,
what has prompted me to write this hub is what has just happened last night, at
a house just a few doors from my daughter house; therefore, this has prompted
me to write about this fire safety issue, so, let me write this article about
the extra dangers, that we as the occupant of these wooden houses face when
they burn, because it is easier for them to burn down and they burn down a lot
quicker than a solid brick and concrete building, even though they can also
burn down, but not as quickly as the timber houses. Somehow, we don’t know yet
the reason, why this house that we are talking about here has burned down, now
it may sound as if there was an electrical fault that started the fire, but
really nobody knows yet, if this was the reason. Anyhow this is the extra
danger that we as the house occupant face, when we live in these wooden houses.
Therefore, at this point of time one may want
to ask; what can be done to avoid or minimise this danger of fires? I am sure
that we all would like to know what is the best way to do that, so that we could
be ready to avoid this fire danger the best way possible. Now, this is what I
am going to try to explain next, in my
own personal ways; since I believe that I might have one thing or two to say
that could help, even if it is in a small way. First of all, let us try to stay
alert and therefore aware of the danger of fire in these wooden houses, since
they burn very quickly, we need also plan what to do to avoid the risks
involved, or what should we do to minimize the dangers?
-----------------------------------------
What should we do to minimize the danger?
How to minimize the fire danger
Therefore, let us see, what we could and
should do to minimize the fire danger?
Today we all talk about that fire alarms may
save life and in fact they do save lives; therefore we all have to understand
that we must at least have a system for fire alarms, even if it might consists
of one single fire alarm: but that is not all, as there are a lot of other
things that one can do, so, let us take a look at what can be done to prevent
the building catching fire, but at the same time and above all, let us find a
way how to avoid loss of life, which is really a tragedy that most times could
be prevented, if everything is planed the right way.
You see, there are many fire hazards in our
houses these days, in fact there are many more fire hazards today than have
been in the past. In the past the fire hazard was present only when we had to
have a fire going, but usually we were there to mind the fire and use the fire
to our advantage, and we were very much aware of its danger, because we used
fire constantly. Today we don’t use the fire as much as we did in the past,
because there are other things that have taken its place, therefore our
awareness of its dangers has become a bit dull so to speak, therefore we seem
to be less careful about fire hazards, but let us have a look where these fire
dangers might be hidden.
Today when it is cold instead of lighting a
fire we have other sorts of heater to warm the place up, some of these heaters
are or might be a fire hazard and really we should not use those heater that
can cause a fire, but if we have to use them, then we should really monitor
them constantly until the day that we are able to replace them with another
type of heather that is safer. But as we all know or at least we have heard all
electric devise can become a fire hazard, so, when we are not using them we
should turn them off properly. For instance, when we go out we should make sure
that everything is turned off properly and above all when we go to bed we must
turn them off, just in case they might start a fire.
Now, what I have said above is only a way for
preventing the fire to start, and then burn the house down, but sometimes no
matter how careful we are a fire can get started for many reasons, for instance
when an electrical fault starts the fire; so, we have to be ready even for that
and work out a way how to avoid this fire danger, even if we have to run away
from the fire if we are in danger, since this might be the only wise thing to
do.
As I have just said, sometimes the only wise
thing to do is to run away from the fire if you are in danger, so this question
arises, how can we do that easily and safely when we happen to be inside and
all the doors are locked?
Here I have to say that I am writing this
explanation in this article, because I want to say that we need to set
everything in a way, that would make it is easy for us to escape the fire,
since not many people seems to point out this particular danger; I believe that
sometimes people make mistakes when they want their houses safe from break in,
because they overdo it, so, they may be able to make their house safe from break
in, but in doing so, they put their lives at risk from the fire, because they
put safety bars to all windows and doors, when this is done it becomes very
hard to get in or out of the house.
This is a dangerous mistake, which could
easily cost people lives and it can be prevented, if we plan it the right way
in advance properly. Therefore, before we start putting safety bars to all
windows and doors, we should use our common sense and realize that if people
cannot get in also people cannot get out, I hope now you see what I mean here,
because this is where the danger of being trapped is.
Look, how many times we have heard that some
people have lost their lives in the fire, when their house burned down. Now,
what follows here is one of the most horrible scenario about fires, it is when
some people are trapped inside a room and they are crying out for help, but
nobody can help them quickly enough to get them out of there, because all their
windows have safety bars on them.
This is what I want to say; whatever you do
for safety reasons to prevent unwanted people coming into your house do not
overdo it, because it is not worth the risk and you can lose your life. So
think first of all, how to set everything up in the first place and make sure
above all that you have a way out in case of fire, and then you can go ahead
and do what you have to do, to make your house safe. I am sure that now you are
going to ask, how can we achieve that? So, let us see what else can be done for
safety reasons.
------------------------------
What else can we do?
So, what else can be done to minimise the
fire dangers for the occupants?
To minimize the fire danger for the occupants
it is not as easy as it sounds. Because every house is different, therefore
every house should be treated in a different way, so there cannot be an easy
answer that is the same for every house; therefore, everybody is going to work
out what could be done in their own case, but let us suppose this scenario to
start with:
So, let us assume that at your house you have
a room that has two windows, you are worried that one day somebody will break
in, or just walk in without you even knowing it, because in summer, when it is
hot the windows are usually open, and because they are low it is easy for a fit
person to get in; so, you are thinking to set safety bars to secure your house.
Okay, it is a very good idea to put safety
bars to the windows to secure your house from thieves, but by putting safety
bars to all your windows and doors, not only it will stop people getting in, it
will also stop people getting out, and if there is a fire you are trapped.
Therefore, in my opinion you can set safety bars to one window only safely,
which you can keep it open all the time if you want, as nobody can get in your
house since there are safety bars, the other window you may have to think of
doing something else, perhaps you can put safety bars on inches that can
manually be opened from the inside, or put in an extra bolts, or whatever it
may be needed to make it secure, but whatever you do you should keep in mind
that one must be able to open this window manually and easily from the inside.
When we talk about opening a window or door
manually, we mean also that you should not install any sort of locks that
require a key to open manually, everything must be there in place already and
you can open this window easily just by using your hands, therefore you can use
this window or door to escape the fire. This also goes for all the rest of the
house, you must leave a way out in each room if possible that you manually can
open from the inside and therefore be able to escape the fire. I hope that I
have explained myself clear enough about what I believe needs to be done.
I am planning to add more articles if and
when I can think of another one, about ways of how we can set or make things
for fire safety reasons in our homes. See you soon.
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Anyhow, first of all try to put yourself out
of danger, then call the emergency number of your country, if in Australia it
is, 000, or call any other authority that are able to help.
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