Tag: fire

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Wildfire Preparedness

Sealing the House Before a Wildfire

There are a number of considerations for prepping your house for a potential or approaching wildfire… Time is your most crucial consideration, but the three important areas of house prep are:

  • Landscaping and removing flammable material as far out from the home as you can.
  • Setting up hydration by putting a sprinkler on the roof, exterior decks and other key areas, and
  • By sealing your house on the outside and then prepping on the inside.

For this quick installment, we’ll focus on sealing the exterior of the home to protect it from some of the many hazards associated with an approaching fire.

Prepare home for wildfire
There are many dangers that come with a wildfire. You have extreme radiant temperatures, heated particulate smoke and other gasses, winds generated by the heat and thermal exchanges with the immediate environment, falling trees, small debris being blown about by the winds, and embers galore that will be cascading down on your property.

Here are but a few things you can do to protect your house before a wildfire:

  1. Think hurricane. Since winds and debris are an issue, you’ll want to prep your house almost like you would for a hurricane, but without as much structural bracing (though you should think about structural bracing anyway as protection against any number of other disasters).
  2. Fire resistant storm shutters would be the best thing to protect your windows from heat and flying debris, but if don’t have them or want them, please don’t think you have no options. Next best thing would be plywood shutters that were pre-cut, painted with a fire-resistant coating, and labeled as to which window they covered. Pre-drill them with holes at the top (and have small hooks over each window pre-installed) and drill finger holes so that one person can lift and hang the plywood sheets for faster installation.
  3. Have covers made for crawl space openings and any other opening that would allow heated gasses or embers access to the inside of your house. For some smaller openings such as soffet vents, you can cover them with a couple of layers of aluminum foil held in place with metallic HVAC duct tape. (The fabric tape we think of when we hear "duct tape" is actually flammable and not very suitable for outdoor application in a wildfire scenario).
  4. Save some metal cans (like large soup cans) to set over your plumbing vent stacks. You don’t want to seal them, but you want to temporarily prevent embers from falling in them and to protect them from catching fire since the vent stacks are usually made of PVC pipe.
  5. If you have a chimney and can reach the top safely enough, you might want to loosely cap the chimney opening with a metal five-gallon bucket or something similar. If you choose not to do this, or can’t, be sure to leave the flue open and the protective fireplace screen closed. You want to do this so that if an ember falls into the chimney it’ll fall on into the fireplace where fire is supposed to be, and not linger in a creosote-coated chimney that could catch fire and then set fire to your house.

To read more about the other steps associated with wildfire preparation, stop by and read our larger wildfire article at http://www.disasterprep101.com/wildfire.htm.

Categories
Uncategorized

Don’t Depend on Police and Fire

Not to sound like broken record, but many local and federal officials are consistent in their warnings for individuals to be ready to help themselves in an emergency. Here’s one of the latest warnings as reported by the Journal News:

When a widespread event — such as a power outage, storm damage or other civil emergency — happens, there is no way that local, state or federal officials can meet the needs of a large number of people in a short period of time, many emergency officials say.

“People need to plan and prepare ahead to survive on their own for at least 72 hours or more,” [Willam Turner, director of the Butler County Emergency Management Agency] said. “Don’t depend on police and fire to help you, because they may not be able to reach you.”

Turner also explained that it was important for parents to share their emergency plans with children, including pertinent contact information. Everyone in your household should know how to shut off utilities to prevent leaks, know basic first aid techniques and should have a well stocked supplies kit. “People need to plan and prepare ahead to survive on their own for at least 72 hours or more,” Turner said.

Source:
http://www.journal-news.com/lifestyle/see-to-immediate-needs-in-event-of-disaster-439486.html?cxtype=rss_lifestyle

Categories
Fire Preparedness/Safety

Winter Fire Safety

According to national fire stats about 84% of all fires are residential fires, and most of these occur in the winter months due to the use of alternative heating devices such as space heaters and fireplaces.

Many of these fire safety sources repeat the logical suggestions that each home should have a working smoke detector and families should practice fire drills.

To this, 1800Prepare adds the following suggestions which are excerpted from the book “Disaster Prep 101” (found on our books page).

1.  Smoke detectors are great to have and they’re inexpensive, so have at least 2 per floor, and have one that only comes out in winter.  This extra one is meant to be used near your alternate heating devices during the winter when they’re in use.

2.  Some of these extra smoke detectors might be located far away from your bedrooms.  Since the worst time for a fire to occur is when the family is asleep, use this simple trick.  Go get a “baby monitor.”  They’re inexpensive new, and you might find some deals at yard sales or thrift stores.  Put the monitor’s transmitter near your farthest smoke detector and the receiver in your bedroom.  If the smoke alarm goes off in the middle of the night, you’ll be sure to hear it.

3.  When you practice your family fire drills, take turns to allow each family member to be “it,” the one who discovers the fire and warns the others.  Also, be sure to have some realistic practice by performing your fire drill while blindfolded and crawling on hands and knees (IF all family members are physically capable and you’re not doing anything dangerous like trying to crawl down the stairs.  Safety first, even in drills!)

4.  Make sure you have a working fire extinguisher in each area a fire may occur such as the kitchen, garage, and near your clothes dryer.

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