Do you have a fire plan.

Some fire services you contact via their website or main switchboard, in my county the stations don’t have individual phone numbers. If you have children then you can get a free fire home safety visit (as well as vulnerable, elderly, disabled etc). Make sure you have a fire plan depending on where you are in the house - if you’re upstairs and the fire was downstairs for example and you can’t get down.
dont use fake chargers eg off amazon/ eBay. Don’t charge things right by the stairs or front door eg electric scooter. Make sure kids aren’t upstairs with headphones on and not hearing the smoke alarm!!!!!
there will be lots of info on your county fire service website.

Thank you for this. I started reading this morning, and had the conversation with my dc earlier. As dc do, they asked questions about why we were talking about it. I did tell them but got quite upset as they asked who had died(we were in the car so they didnt realise)

I had a HUGE fear of housefires as a child and feel reading this thread had brought it back.

That said, i am pleased i have read it, and have a plan in place. I will get more alarms

.my house is old and has old wooden doors that wouldnt last 2 minutes. Also, my bedroom window is definitely not escapable so will get a window hammer.

THIS

I have a woodburner, not an open fire.
I have an induction hob.
Nobody smokes indoors.
All doors are open at night but there are smoke detectors on the landing and hall.
My front door is old so can always be opened from the inside.
Every upstairs room has a fully opening window.

Cars are much more risky than houses.

Such awful tragedies recently.

Our house has 3 floors. We have smoke alarms installed and linked in every room in the house. When it detects fire, it will sound the alarm and also tell you which room the fire is in.

I never leave tumble driers, dishwashers etc on overnight and personally do not charge anything either, but persuading my teen children and DH to be as safety conscious is not easy…

Wow despite having a Firesafe check done for my elderly parent I’ve learned a lot on here too & if am honest have thought that bcos my home is relatively small it will be a no brainer what to do & get out of!!Obvs got all the basics etc alarms, detectors etc. No safety windows however in the main bedroom & all new fire safe windows are at the back - had thought this would be the route out & onto flat roof. But they’re all above the kitchen & so any flat roof structure could be compromised by a fire if that’s the most likely place for one to happen in.

So thought window hammers would be my next best option for front bedrooms - but a quick look at them online all seem to be designed mainly for car windows - are these even double glazed?? I’ve looked for demo videos of how to use for domestic double glazed sealed units & coming up with nothing. Don’t want to put faith in something that’s not going to work.

PP’s saying can retrofit wide opening fire safe windows into existing pvcu ones?? Is this the case? Mine open out but are restricted & can only open so far so cldnt get out at present.

I see that you’re supposed to smash any windows in the corners as the weakest point etc but looking online this seems to be true for car windows but not so much double glazed domestic ones??

@Firefightress1any advice or suggestions on this?

Also thanks to @CornishTigerfor starting this thread. Think it’s been really helpful - as so easy to forget about all of this - esp when our most likely focus is preventing pple from getting in & making our houses impossible to break into!

Honestly I needed to read this, because I am worrying about it. And yes I did need perspective.

I have realised though that I dont have enough smoke heat/ alarms ( curently only one smoke alarm on upstairs landing ceiling) and this thread has prompted me to sort that out. It has also prompted me to show the children what to do in a fire ( I doubt my 4 year old would manage though)

Obviously it is good to get perspective and the risks are generally low but people like myself often dont give this kind of thing much if any thought and nobody would trade places with that poor man. So this thread is good in that it has highlighted for some people ( like me!) what they could do to do better.

While it's absolutely sensible to have fire precautions like alarms and a plan, I think it's also important to put it into context.

In 2024 178 people a year died in house fires in the UK. 1,633 people died in road accidents in 2024.

The most common cause of fires overall is cooking appliances (44pc) and the most common time for fires is between 6pm and 8pm, with peaks in June and December. Gas hobs are highest risk (obviously there is a flame)

63pc of fires are caused by human factors (mostly cooking, but also things like bonfires out of control, unsafe storage of combustible materials)

The most common cause of death from fires (as opposed to non fatal fires) is cigarettes.

Electrical faults are counted as a non-human factor. About 28 deaths a year from fire are caused by this compared to 78 from smoking

UK house fire statistics | How many house fires per year? https://www.morganclark.co.uk/about-us/blog/uk-house-fire-statistics/

1.Have alarms and test they work.
2.Don't smoke or let people smoke in your house.
3.Have an escape plan.

1. Don't get distracted when cooking especially on gas hobs. Consider switch to electric hob next time you renovate.
2. Worry more about how you escape a car that might be on fire since that is a higher risk (window hammer and seatbelt cutter)

Quite, could literally be jumping into the fire.

The best thing anyone can do is get decent alarms and plenty of them, unplug chargers etc, don’t use appliances overnight, don’t smoke, don’t use the hob as a surface, close doors, be aware of open fires, log burners, storing logs close to said burners and not cluttering the area around fires with books, toys etc.

Another consideration for those planning on jumping out the window onto a flat roof - this is incredibly dangerous if you don't know where the fire is. If the fire is in the room below the flat roof then the structure could be compromised and won't take your weight.

As said earlier by firefighters, if you can't get out then phone 999 and tell them what room you are in and the location of that room in your house. They will give you fire survival guidance and direct the oncoming firefighters to your location.

We had a plan when DS was little as we both worked in and around the fire service and so were worried about the risks. Particularly with DS not getting out without the cats (if he was alone) as he was incredibly attached to them. But we did a lot of work to reassure him that cats are resourceful and will get out of you leave the front door ajar.

I’ve also listened to a fire control call during a house fire and it was awful (despite me knowing it had a happy ending). Credit to fire control for being able to do that - it’s not something I could do as a job.

On attendance times though - I think a pp said 6 minutes. West Mids fire is the fastest in England at an average 5 minutes - but they have a small densely populated area. Even I London the fire attendance times are I think 8 mins for the first appliance and 10 for the second. And in rural areas it could be 20 minutes. So definitely worth thinking about your escape plan.

We have a plan. DD's bedroom is on the ground floor so if she can't go out of her room to go out the front door she climbs out of her window. Upstairs we have a fire ladder on the wall outside DS's bedroom window so if we are upstairs then we go to DS's room across the hall, and then we all go out his window and down the ladder.

We have fire extinguishers on every floor plus fire blanket in the kitchen. We live in a wooden house and have to do a fire safety check every year for the fire service and sometimes we get an inspection. Fire extinguishers are on the required list.

Brutally, if a fire was so hot that it could melt metal, you're not going to be around to worry about it by that point.

Completely unrealistic. People need to stop faffing with ropes and ladders and go check their smoke alarms and unplug things overnight.

Exactly this. I’ve done fire training in the fire service ‘smoke house’. It really hit home that you won’t necessarily be able to see a thing. Also, as part of the exercise, they put teddies under the beds for us to find - as often, that’s where children will hide in a fire.

So the bedroom door is open, you plan to search for pets, you think you’ll have 20 seconds and the ability to assemble a ladder and get out. All after you’ve finally woken up in smoke and learned there is a fire?

Completely unrealistic. People need to stop faffing with ropes and ladders and go check their smoke alarms and unplug things overnight.

https://www.london-fire.gov.uk/safety/the-home/smoke-alarms-and-heat-alarms/

Heat alarms weren't on the list when we bought our house, and we haven't updated our setup as the dc grew. What we had seemed sufficient.
They also weren't suggested by our fire brigade after our fire (they did a check of what we had).

I think i will look into investing in one now that I know about them though.

They don't recommend smoke alarms in kitchens though, I think because they can make people complacent if they go off regularly.

Discussing what to do with pets is important. When we had our fire and it looked like the house was going to go up as well as the outbuildings Dd was home alone (she’s an adult). She was getting all the animals out which obviously I’m pleased about but on the other hand if it had been worse she could have died while searching for a cat! The cats hid and she was struggling to find them/get them. They’re house cats so she felt she couldn’t just sling them out when she did get them. She’d got one cat and a dog in her car when I turned up and was running about with another cat in her arms in the front garden. Her plan had been to get them all in and drive away from the house which I thought was sensible. I love my animals but i wouldn’t want Dd to risk her life for them.

@Housefiresarentfunthat sounds very thorough, but I’m wondering why you don’t have a fire alarm in the kitchen - which I’ve assumed from your comment about the alarm not going off due to the kitchen fire doors? Is that just because cooking sets it off too much?

We used to do drills when our dc were small, but haven't since they all reached adulthood.

We actually had a fire 8 years ago which destroyed the kitchen and caused damage through most of the rest of downstairs. Things we have that helped save dh/the building:
Fire door on the kitchen contained the fire to that room until the fire brigade arrived.
Kitchen to the side of the main house with a flat roof meant no-one sleeping above it. If this isn't possible (most houses), I would now only use any rooms above a kitchen as a day space/ guest room to avoid people being asleep in it.

Working smoke alarms throughout the house that are checked weekly and batteries changed annually- we used to do this over Christmas figuring we wouldn't miss the extra expense. I the end the dog woke dh before the alarms went off due to our fire door working so well.

Keep all doors closed especially at night.

Keep keys in the door locks for an easy escape. Dh worked nights so although he was home asleep and the rest of us out, this made his escape easier. It's not easy to see in smoke.

Make sure escape plans include pets. Children need to know that they can't hunt through the house for the cat. We used the cat carrier as our cats bed so we could just zip it up if needed. Stress test these, wake the kids at night occasionally. Practice.

Park sensibly so fire engines can get through, and if you see one on lights, get out of the way. Our fire fighters lost valuable minutes because cars wouldn't let them through bottlenecks. They were really frustrated. We live a few miles away from this tragedy and those roads are so narrow I can imagine it wasn't easy for the rescuers to get there.

We recently arrived at a hotel which didn't meet fire safety regulations- we left. Assess the risk when you are away from home.

A good insurance policy to deal with the aftermath.

Ds1 has recently bought his first home. One of his first purchases will be a properly fitted fire door for the kitchen.

If you have smoke alarms in every room and level your chances of getting out in more than enough time as huge.
Don't just have a couple of smoke alarms in the hall and landing.

This thread is great and a real reminder for lots of us - thankyou. I have ordered some glass hammers to put in bedrooms, we have really old windows but ours and the second bedroom can be opened to get out - they are so old the locks don’t work so always able to be opened quickly. My baby’s room windows don’t open so I’ll put the hammer in there.
My safety conscious parent always put a window key for that room behind the door on a little nail - also the front and back doors too. Means you can find keys in seconds if you need to. Once we replace our windows (a 2026 job!) we will do this.

Yes, fortunately we have access to outside from every room including bedrooms,even our conservatory roof is safe to walk across if necessary. We used to go through it with DS when he was little.

I think most people die by smoke inhalation well before the fire gets to them, so closing doors gives you a greater chance of survival. Closing doors is easy and manageable but switching off a fridge is not realistic.

I was thinking about this morning, after reading the news about that poor family who died on boxing day.

We live in a bungalow and every room has either a door to outside, or a window that opens up wide enough to get out. That said I am going to run through with dc in the event of a fire they just get themselves out and not to worry about anyone else, and to raise the alarm for help, and get to as far away from the fire as possible. One thing I really need dh to do it put our fire alarms up. We have them in the house, but not up, which we really need to prioritise.

Our escape route for upstairs is from the kids bedroom down onto a storage box that my very tall husband could reach if he lowered himself down.

We also keep all of the doors closed when we go to bed.

Yes you can get ones with just a key hole on the outside.

I used to live in a house share and the owner was a very fire conscious woman. All the bedrooms doors were fire doors with those kind of locks - just a thumb lock on the inside but keyhole on the outside. They were obviously internal doors but you can get external doors like that as well.