Let’s Make a Home Escape Plan!

Every family needs a home escape plan. If your family doesn’t have one, we’ve got all the information you need to make a home escape plan together. It’s easy!

Which Floor Plan is the Most Like Yours?

Or...Simply draw up your own floor plan, don’t worry about the size of the rooms, they don’t have to be exact.

Label all of the rooms, especially the bedrooms. Make sure that everyone know where the doorways, windows, and hallways are located.

Let’s Check Those Windows

Ask your parents to help you choose the best window in each room to use as a backup escape route, just in case the door and hallways are blocked by heat, smoke, and fire. Make sure that you could easily open the window if there was ever an emergency.

If the bedroom is above ground level, ask your parents if there is a rooftop that is safe enough for you to crawl out on, or if you have an escape ladder that you could use with their help.

Decide On a Meeting Place

A meeting place is a safe spot outside - usually in front of your home - where your family knows to meet if there’s ever a fire. It could be a mailbox, a big tree, a streetlight, whatever you choose as long as everyone knows where the chosen spot is.

Having a meeting place will allow your parents to know that everyone made it out of your home safely, which they can then report to firefighters.

Hey let’s take a second to check out the Meeting Place Song!

Get Out The Markers!

All right, let’s get drawing! With a black marker, pen, or crayon draw the exit you normally use out of each room. Don’t stop yet! Keep drawing your route until you’re safely out of the house.

Make note of what you would do along the way if your exit suddenly became blocked by heat, smoke, and fire.

Now with a red marker, draw your emergency escape route. In most rooms this secondary exit would be a window.

Practice, Practice, Practice!

Have a fire drill with your family, just like you would at school. Let’s pretend that the fire happens at night. Have everyone go into their bedrooms – doors closed – and then have Mom or Dad press the test button on the smoke alarm.

Round 1

For the first drill, have everyone pretend to check their door for smoke and heat, and then crawl out of the house through the exits you normally use, like doors and hallways. Have everyone go to the meeting place.

Round 2

For the second drill, let’s pretend the bedroom doors are hot, and your exit is blocked by smoke and fire. Now get everyone to test his or her secondary exit. Don’t worry, if you’re too small, or if going out on say a rooftop is too dangerous, you don’t have to actually escape out of the house. As long as you know what to do, and how to escape through your secondary exit that’s fine!

For more information on how to get out of your bedroom safely click here!

You Did It!

Knowing what to do if there is ever a fire in your house is a very important skill that everyone should know. Practice your home escape plan.

Parents

For more information, visit our home escape plan page in our Fire Safety section.