Do you have a fire plan.

We don't have children two bed small house and our front bedroom where we sleep has two full opening side windows over a sloping roof bay window so max drop from the edge of that would be 7ft 6 doeable

There’s been another truly awful fire in Switzerland. This thread prompted me to check our fire alarms and discuss basic safety with 6 year old DD. It’s all so sad.

Oh god. Noted. Thank you.

so if your local crew are out on an incident already, no other fire crew from another town would come to your house fire?? Really?? What I’m saying is that you can’t assume it’ll be your local crew so they won’t know the way around your house.

We always had a plan. The children each had a desk and office chair in their rooms. They were all taught that it was okay to break the window if they needed to and the exit via their door was blocked by fire. Throw the desk chair at the window, throw their doona cover over the broken glass and climb out the window. Meet on the next-door neighbour's front lawn. Sometimes in a panic situation, children hide in cupboards or under their beds, afraid to break a window in case they get in trouble, so teaching that this is okay in an emergency is important.

Friends of ours had taught their children to run and grab the folders that had all their school certificates in them. I had a serious chat with the friend. Yes, those items were sentimental and might only take a moment to grab, but both children had upstairs bedrooms. I asked her what she valued more, what would happen if her child ran upstairs to grab the folder and was then trapped. Fortunately, they reevaluated their family plan after that.

The awful news has made us look at things too. We are relatively fortunate as we are all on one level at night, each room has fire escape windows, we are only two storeys so possible to jump if need be, and most of the appliances that pose a fire risk are in our utility room extension, which has all external walls. But I have been thinking about it a lot the last few days.

We made it into a bit of a game yesterday with 6yo and 3yo. We had a pretend fire drill, so they got into bed and pretended to be asleep, DH set the fire alarm off and they jumped out of bed and waited for one of us to come to get them, and we all went to the main bedroom and to the window. We then did another version where we couldn’t get to them, and they went to their windows to open them and pretended to shout FIRE, HELP.

We tried to keep it a bit silly so as not to scare them and they thought it was great fun. It was a chance for DH and I to discuss what we would do: who gets what child and an agreement we wouldn’t attempt to get downstairs to get the dog, just get us outside and then try to get her out by breaking the kitchen patio doors. And DH looked from window and as he’s v tall reckoned he could drop down onto one of the cars in the driveway and then be in a good position to help the rest of us down. We didn’t do a test run of that though!

I hope we never have to use any of it but I feel a bit better knowing we’ve discussed it and tested the fire alarms. We got them all replaced a couple of years ago so they are all linked etc and in all the rooms they should be, both heat detectors and the traditional smoke alarms.

Such an important issue. Any tips for chatting to DC without freaking them out. I had a chat with my autistic 9 year old, and 5 year old yesterday and they did not cope well.

I agreed a plan with DH when we first had DC2 (when I realised we needed to be coordinated to get both DC) but we’ve moved twice since then plus now live in a 3 storey house with just DC1 on the top floor. Thank you for the reminder OP to discuss a plan with the teenagers.

I also need to stop leaving the vacuum cleaner charging overnight under the stairs. I also don’t think the DC know how to open the windows properly as they are on restricters.

I’m not going to sleep now.

Some people wont even get the chance to try and escape. They are overcome by smoke even in their beds.
Do they know what caused this fire?

A lot of fire brigades will fit free alarms. They last ten years and they say they’ll come back to replace them then. It’s well worth it.

There was a big house fire a few doors down from us a couple of years back, and it’s all terraces here. We were packed up in ten minutes, DH hovering in the crowd outside to see if we’d need to evacuate to a hotel (no family).

Yes they're just restrictors that can be easily unhooked by an adult to fully open the window but my worry is that the children don't know how to or couldn't manage it in the panic of a fire. And also if I demonstrate to DS how they unhook then it sort of defeats the object of them being there. Bit of a case of weighing up the higher risk 🤔

All our doors are fire doors (townhouse, required) and have linked fire alarms with battery back up. All windows open though you need to come down to middle floor due to height, we have a balcony you can climb down from. Despite the popularity on Mumsnet, do not leave phones etc charging downstairs at night, if you need to charge overnight it needs to be in your room. I charge mine in the evening

is there such a thing as window safety catches that can be unlocked to fully open the window? If so, that could be a solution if the key was kept somewhere close by?

@ShesTheAlbatross youngest is 7, but he has ADHD and has form for taking risks and doing things he shouldn't which is what prompted the catches. I think I will need to give this some thought.

We always have a plan. As children my dad used to do fire drills in the house and we all had to show how we planned our safe escape from wherever we were at the time. I didn’t know any other kids who did this at home though!

How old are your children? Because I think you need to balance risks - the safety catches are for a different risk than fire. A quick google tells me that 4,000 children a year in the UK are injured falling from windows. Thankfully almost none die, but almost no children die in house fires.

Lol you're assuming I don't know where I live? It's our men and Sophie (I take your point on that) the only female firefighter or fuck all here.

This is the question I’m asking - everything online suggests only for car windows not double glazed sealed units??

I have thought a lot about this poor family and about our own safety at home.

I hadn't thought about the risk with a flat roof so thank you to the PP who mentioned that.

We also have safety catches on the upstairs windows but now I'm worried they could potentially do more harm than good as in event of a fire the DC wouldn't be able to get window open enough to climb out so I'm thinking maybe they should go?

You’re assuming the local firefighters (there’s women too) would be the ones attending. It could be a crew from the next town. The fire service is like the police- affected by cuts.

Dhs best friend is a fireman so my Dc since very young have had many a chat with him about what they would do, and he's explicitly told them exactly what they should do and crawled about the rooms showing them . He actually managed to convince one of my dds to jump out the upstairs window to him down below to prove a point that she would be OK.

They worry about the pets, I'm always told them not to worry, just get out and I'll sort that, in reality, I'm not sure I could but we live in a small town and quite a few of the firemen have been in our house so would know where to go, who's rooms who's, where the dogs bed, or the lizards tank (dhs pal looks after her when we're on holiday so knows we're she usually likes to hide, he would find her if on duty) or where the cat is likely to be.

Have just bought some glass hammers - can they be used on double glazing? I’m guessing they would work, not v easy to test out myself 😂 but thanks again for this thread, has made so many of us think!

This is a good point. Luckily I have two windows into my kitchen (flat roof below DDs bedroom) with only light privacy blinds, so would be able to see if that's where the fire is? However this thread has made me think seriously about relocating her bedroom to one of the spare rooms because it's presently above the kitchen, which seems to be the most dangerous location. However the other spare rooms are much more difficult to escape from. Difficult.

Some fires are arson. People pour accelerant through the letter box.

Just keep your stairs clear, doors shut, unplug chargers, don't daisy chain extension leads and have masses of smoke alarms and you should be fine.

Deaths may be low, but there are 34,000 house fires a year, one every 15 mins!!! So chances of dying are low, but smoke damage, water damage and smoke inhalation can be extremely distressing.