Home Fire Escape Plan

Fire Escape Plan Tips

Fire can spread rapidly through your home, leaving you as little as two minutes to escape safety once the alarm sounds. The Cosumnes Fire Department offers these tips in creating your home escape plan:

• Children and older adults need help escaping a fire. Know who needs help and pick someone to help them. 
• Purchase a special smoke alarm that use strobes and/or vibrations to signal a fire if someone in the household has a hearing impairment.
• Have an outside meeting place, a safe distance from the home, where everyone should meet. Use a portable phone or a neighbor’s phone to call 911. Once you get out, stay out. Do not go back inside for any reason.
• Have smoke alarms on every level of your home. Make sure a smoke alarm is inside or near every bedroom. For the best detection and notification protection, install both ionization and photoelectric-type smoke alarms. 
• If you have security bars on doors and window, have a "quick-release" latch. This makes it easy to get outside in an emergency. 
• Know at least two ways out of every room, if possible. You might need an escape ladder to get out of upstairs bedrooms windows. If so, they should be part of your fire drill, deployed safely from a ground-floor window for practice.
• Make a fire escape plan for your family. 
• Practice your home fire drill at night and during the day with everyone in your home, twice a year. Practice using different ways out.
• Test each smoke alarm every month. Push the test button until you hear a loud noise.
• Young children might sleep through the sound of the smoke alarm. Be prepared for a family member to wake children for fire drill and in a real emergency.

More Information

• Create your Home Fire Escape Plan (PDF)
• NFPA Home Fire Escape Plan Safety Tips
• NFPA Handouts and Safety Tip Sheets in Other Languages