Fire safety first of all 9

Fire safety first of all

Welcome to our page 9, Home fire safety first of all 
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A house on fire, timber house burn down very quickly, people that live in them should be prepared for these fire, they should look for safety and also what they need to do in case their home burns down.

Home fire safety first of all 

Dear readers, we said that we were going to publish a DIY brickwork article, but something came up and we will publish, DIY brickwork in our next page.
So let us tell you what has come up now; 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 in advance things that could have prevented that; so, sometimes we might even blame ourselves for what has happened. We are writing about this today, because there was a fire in a nearby street and although the house was badly damaged the occupant were lucky enough to run out of this house in time, even though they lost all their belongings, so this makes me think about what could have been done to prevent this fire, or to plan what should one do in case of fire; well this is not easy to answer, but let us look at the many aspect that could help.

So we should make this a priority and believe that to prevent home fire or any type of fire that puts in danger people and property is very important, we all ask questions after some tragic event happens, where properties are burned out and sometimes even loss of life happens; the worse part of it all is that it could have been prevented, of course these event 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 also 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.

You see, if everybody of us is able to 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, there should have been a way to prevent these tragic happenings.

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 home fire safety first of all.

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Home fire safety first of all

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 have to guard ourselves from these dangerous two elements and also 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 that I wrote 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. In order 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 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:

·        Obama hails 'heroic' firefighters killed by blaze

01 Jul 2013

·        Arizona wildfire

·        One dead in brutal heatwave sweeping America's southwest

·        America bakes as temperatures approach world record

·        Arizona battles deadly wildfire

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

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 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 thing 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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Fire safety first in wooden houses

In this article here we will be talking about the importance of fire safety first 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, what has prompted 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 new short article about the extra dangers that we as the occupant face in these wooden houses, 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 also, but not as quickly as the timber houses. Somehow we don’t know yet the reason but this house burned down, at the moment 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 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 the danger of fires? I am sure that we all would like to know what is the best way to do that, so that we would be ready to avoid this fire danger the best way possible; you see, this is what I am trying 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?

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 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 hub in order to say that we need to set everything in a way that 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 that 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 and this is where the danger is.

Look, how many times we have heard that some people have lost their lives in the fire when their house burned down and this is one of the most horrible scenario when some of them are trapped inside a room and they are crying out for help, but nobody can help them quickly enough to get them out, 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.

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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 and every house is also different, 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 and 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.

Queensland Fire and Rescue Service

I believe we have said enough in this article, so, see you in our next article about buildings.

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Dear readers, we will go back to publish DIY brickwork in our next page. 

See you soon.