How would you and your family escape if your home were on fire? People often think they’ll have more time to get out than they really do. It’s usually just three minutes, according to the Fire Safety Research Institute. Working, well-maintained fire alarms are your family’s best chance, but making a plan and practicing home fire drills can also save lives, especially if you carefully adapt your plan to your home’s design and your family’s needs.

What is a home escape plan?

It’s easy to assume you’d think logically when attempting to protect yourself and your loved ones from a fire. However, we cannot always predict our response to a smoky, scary atmosphere; you may become disoriented or even incapacitated by fear. By planning and practicing how you will escape with the whole family and alert the fire brigade, everyone can feel more confident and safe. You can also include proactive steps you can take before an emergency situation happens that make your dwelling safer, such as raising concerns about the type of cladding your building has with your landlord if you live in a flat. It can be difficult not to panic when confronted with such a scary situation, but if you’re well-prepared, it needn’t be something that you spend time worrying about.

Sounds good. How do I make an escape plan?

The details will depend on your home and the people you share it with. There is different advice for different dwellings, and if someone in your household has a disability or other health concern that might impede them from following our advice, it is important to work with your building manager or get tailored advice from your local fire services on all the ways you can stay safe. For example, if someone has hearing difficulties, you or your landlord can get a smoke alarm that uses a strobe light and vibrating pads.

If you live in a purpose-built flat, bedsit, or maisonette...

Each building is designed with fire safety in mind, and the basic fire design of a building involves compartmentation. This means keeping the fire in one area of the building, giving you the safest route out. Have you ever noticed why there are so many doors in hospitals and schools? This is compartmentation; each time a door closes behind you, you are creating another compartment between you and the fire. Now think of your apartment or flat. If you leave your house, if that's where the fire is, then your front door will automatically close, creating compartment number 1. You walk along the corridor and potentially through another door, compartment 2. You then open a door into a lobby before the stairs, compartment 3, before opening the door onto the stairs themselves, compartment 4. 4 doors, each with a minimum of 30 minutes of protection. By walking away from your flat, you have put 2 hours of protection between you and the fire.

If you live in a flat, your landlord, housing provider, or managing agent needs to tell you about the fire safety arrangements for your building. That includes the evacuation plan.

Your evacuation plan may advise you to stay put, or it may advise that you leave the building.

If the advice for your building is to stay put:

In the UK, purpose-built blocks of flats and maisonettes are legally required to be built to give you some protection from fire elsewhere in the building. Their walls, floors, and doors will contain flames and smoke for at least 30 to 60 minutes.
Close your windows and doors and stay in your home.
Call 999. Tell emergency services where you are in the building and the best way to reach you.
Follow the operator’s guidance until firefighters arrive at the scene, and be prepared to follow instructions when they do.
If you are being directly affected by fire, smoke, or heat, alert everyone you can and follow the advice below to evacuate the building.

If the advice for your building is to evacuate:

Leave your flat or maisonette and shut the doors behind you.

Don’t stop to investigate how the fire began or to pick up valuables. You may think that you have time to grab a few things, but it can take as little as five minutes for a home to become engulfed in flames.

Items are replaceable, and nothing is more valuable than life. Your priority should always be getting out as quickly as possible. It is especially important that your children understand this rule, as taking time or running back to get something can be life-threatening.

Do not use lifts. It may be tempting to do this when you are rushing and fear tripping and falling on the stairs. However, a sudden power failure could get you trapped between floors with no way of summoning help. The lift could also open on the floor where the fire is located due to problems with the lift mechanism or electrics. Exit the building quickly but carefully by stairs.

Call 999 as soon as you are safe to do so; don’t assume someone else has made the call.

If you live in a bungalow, house, or flat within a converted older building...

If a fire starts inside your home, you need to:

Get out as fast as you can.
Stay out, and shut the doors behind you.
Call 999 as soon as it is safe to do so.
Never try to fight the fire; you could put yourself and others in danger. The sooner you call the fire brigade, the sooner help will arrive. Remember, smoke develops and rises to the ceiling, then crawls across the ceiling and fills up the room. Before you knew it, the smoke could have blocked your exit. If you were concentrating on tackling a fire, you wouldn’t notice this.

How to make your escape plan:

The best route is the normal way you come in and out of your home.
Plan a second route in case the first one is blocked; consider windows and the kitchen.
Take a few minutes to practice your escape plan regularly.
Keep door and window keys where everyone you live with can find them—on hooks behind curtains or boxes on window sills, perhaps.
If you have additional security gates or shutters, make sure they can be easily opened from the inside without a key in a fire.
If you or anyone you live with might find it difficult to escape quickly without assistance in an emergency, make extra plans to get them to safety and book a free home fire safety visit for extra expert advice.
Make sure everyone in your home understands what to do in a fire. Remember to keep visitors in the know, too.

If your escape route is blocked,

If you can’t get out, get everyone into one room, ideally with a window and a phone. Close the door and put bedding or any soft materials around the bottom of the door to block the smoke, then open the window and shout for help: 'HELP, FIRE'.

If you have a phone with you, call 999. Be ready to describe where you are and the quickest way to reach you.

What if I have to leave my home through the window?

This should be your last resort but is still important to consider for your escape plan, and even then only if you are on the ground or first floor.
The London fire brigade has to arrive within 5 minutes. On average, across the UK, the arrival time is 9 minutes and 12 seconds. This includes rural areas. If the fire brigade has been called, then it is better to wait.
Always lower any children out of the window first if you have to use this route.
If you have a baby or a very small child, put them inside a quilt cover and lower them at arm’s length to the ground.
Remember to grasp children around the wrist so that when you let go, they have no option but to fall. Holding a child’s hand allows them to hang on to you, as they won’t want to let go, which could endanger you both.
Don’t jump; lower yourself to arms-length from the window sill and drop.
Don’t try to push a mattress out of the window; it will get stuck and you will not be able to get out. It would also make it much harder for a firefighter to get in and rescue you.
If the surface below your window is hard, you could throw some bedding to soften your landing.
When lowering yourself last, make sure you’ve got a clear space to land.

Extra tips from a real firefighter:

Your local fire service may have resources like customisable posters to download that help make your escape plan clear to everyone in the home. You could also make one with your children to help introduce them to the concept and remember your steps to safety.
You and your partner may need to make a decision about who wakes them up and gets them to a place of safety based on the proximity of your sleeping spots to children, elderly relatives, pets, etc.
Have a Plan B for if you cannot leave your home by your most-used exits. Make sure everyone in your home knows all the escape routes.
Keep escape routes clear of clutter and well lit.
Make sure everyone knows the location of your window and door keys. Write these into your plan if it’s safe to do so.
If any of your smoke alarms go off, never assume it is a false alarm.
Shout ‘FIRE’ to alert others in the home.
Try to stay calm.
Beware of hot doors. Doors that are very hot to the touch or have smoke billowing through the cracks will more than likely have a fire on the other side. This means that the door is actually holding the fire back, and opening it would only allow the fire to spread. If you find a door that you believe to be safe, open it, but always do so cautiously, with the awareness that it could be dangerous on the other side.
Teach everyone to stop, drop, and roll if their clothes catch fire during an escape.
If there’s smoke, make sure everyone knows to keep low where the air is clearer.
Don’t break windows. It can be tempting to break windows to let smoke out, especially if you have family members with respiratory problems. However, the majority of deaths related to fires are actually caused by smoke inhalation rather than the heat of the fire itself. Breaking open windows allows the fire to gain more access to oxygen, which helps the fire grow, which would greatly decrease your chances of escape. By keeping the windows closed, you are starving the fire as much as possible. It is much better to use the precious time you have when a fire occurs to find an escape route.

Never go back into a burning building once you are safely outside.

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How do create a home fire escape plan? Unii has the answer.