Fire Safety: To tell parents of small children to keep a duvet cover in the bedroom

[WorldLeaderPretend]

When my kids were small, I kept a spare duvet cover under the bed in each bedroom. Before I had children, a house 3 doors down lost 2 of their 3 children in a house fire. Parent got into the room but couldn't get the kids out. This haunted me and I decided I could lower a baby or toddler out of a first floor window inside an empty duvet cover. Even if it didn't go right to the ground, it would hugely reduce the distance they would be falling from. I kept one in every child's room until the youngest was 5 or so. Even today we have an agreed escape plan for a fire (and ladders stored on the side of the house for easy access).

Other top tips include using a towel on the pillow for a vomiting child - you just change the towel rather than having to keep changing sheets and pillowcases.

Oh and after a bad dream, you shake the nasty dream off the pillow onto the floor and turn it over to the nice dream on the other side of the pillow. I still do this now I am in my 50s!

For safety or ease, what do you do? Any brilliant ideas?

Also, we have the fire extinguishers that operate like aerosols rather than the traditional pin openings. We have three kids and are not confident that they could handle the regular ones in a moment of panic.

I nearly died in a fire when I was 18. I still think this is bullshit.

Christ above! I too thought this was going to be something fun, or maybe about heat or something. Instead I am now thinking about house fires. Way to ratchet up the Sunday night anxieties.

Thanks for that, OP.

The most important thing is to get inter connected smoke and heat alarms, so that if one goes off, they all sound. They don't need any wiring, you just link them up and stick / screw them to the ceiling.

They have non replaceable batteries with a 10 year life so don’t need changed each year. In a small house or flat you’d want a heat detector for the kitchen and smoke detectors in the living room and hall. Will cost you about £100 last time I checked.

They are really loud when they go off - we have 4 ( kitchen, Living room, downstairs hall and upstairs hall ) and it’s 4 times the volume of a single alarm going off ( obviously). You would have to be drugged to sleep through it.

This is more likely to save your life in a fire than anything else.

If you are worried about a pan fire in your kitchen you can buy a fire blanket for under £20.

I concentrated on preventing fires in the first place - like switching off Christmas tree lights if we weren't in the room, chucking DH out to smoke outside (yuck, never get with a smoker!!!), never, ever leaving appliances running overnight and unplugging everything that could be unplugged, mains smoke alarm and battery smoke alarm.

The ‘Similar threads’ suggestions are comfortingly dissimilar, other than the word ‘duvet’ appearing. Might help?

(They are often quite old though, be warned.)

My daughter saved us from a fire in the summer of 2020. She was awake at about 5am one morning (thanks to being on pandemic time) and heard a noise that she thought was rain at first falling on the velux attic windows. Turned out that some little fucker decided to turn arsonist for the night and set the wooden bin sheds for the apartments next to us alight. We have a front door that doesn't require a key to open it from the inside and if you are ever replacing your front door I'd advise you to look into this. I can't imagine what would happen if you spent minutes searching for your keys to open the door. The fire brigade arrived 11 minutes after my dd phoned them. But the heat from the flames had already reached the fascia of the 3 storey apartment block and cracked the glass in one of our 2nd storey bedroom windows. I've always had smoke alarms on each floor of our house but now I have carbon monoxide and smoke alarms in each bedroom and hall and in the sitting room too.

The OP would have had more meaning if it didn’t transition from saving children in a fire, to the maudlin filler

So many wonderfully earnest folks wanting to give us all “tips” on here, so little time

We all have a choice, read on if you find helpful, hide or leave the thread if it upsets you.
My friends nearly died in a house fire. My friend had to drop his partner from a window and he was pulled out. He came round to a fireman screaming in his face "how many children are inside?". Turned out a neighbour thought they had a young family (they didn't).He met the crew that saved them later on, and they told him that they regularly had to face tragedies where adults had fled, on instinct, without counting all their children had got out.
So talking about making an escape plan is absolutely OK. The Fire Service tell you to make one. Every bedroom has a smoke alarm and CO detector, as do downstairs rooms and three floors (landings).This saved our lives last year, when I decided I should really get round to putting up the CO alarms. The same night (2am) it went off in a bedroom, the neighbour's chimney had got blocked.Because the children had been trained to flee, they woke us up.

For smoke inhalation you can breathe through a wet towel,
with your nose
im sure theres some masks you can buy that you can wet quickly

You should crouch down as low as possible , or on your hands and knees when going through the smoke, the smokes hotter when it rises up, and crouching low will help you see

I dont actually know what i would do first because i live on the 2nd floor and my windows are really awkward to climb through
It depends where the fires coming from and how bad it is
Probably drop my cat out the window firstaA
And then ive got to decide which exit to use depending ..
Good thing to think about ..

Good plan OP. Everybody needs to have a fire escape plan and to practise doing
it. I have emergency rope ladder on my Christmas list now.

This had me thinking about grenfell tower,
UK need to make towerblocks and big building have fire escapes on the exterior, it would save so many lives but they dont because its an "eyesore" ?? Evil people

Aw yes... Let's get offended because OP didn't know about three exact instance of your neighbours situation and had a perhaps flawed but we'll intentioned idea to save their children in the situation of a fire. So offensive. She should have thought of your neighbour first! What a terrible person! 😩

I don’t know about fires, but when we’ve had earthquakes, the cats were the first to flee. I don’t think it would be advisable to worry about trying to help your cat in the event of a fire. They will most likely escape by themselves.

Grenfell was particularly awful because people were being advised to stay put, which should have been the right thing to do, but on that night it wasn’t.

I am not particularly offended. I am merely suggesting that perhaps the OP might consider a title like "Tips for Fire Safety in the House," so people don't open a thread about duvets to read about children being burnt to death in fires. I am not fundamentally rattled. I am fine. I was simply startled.

Imagine if you came here because you were reading one of the similar threads (e.g. "toddler duvet question," suggested above) and instead got to read about having ladders on your windows so your children didn't die. Perhaps another reason for MN to reconsider the 'similar threads' plan...

Anyway, yes, have a fire safety plan, get good smoke alarms, and get your chimneys checked every six months if you burn wood. Night, all.

Firstly, OP you’re far more likely to get robbed by placing ladders on the side of your house, than need to use them to escape a fire.

Secondly, it’s unreasonable to complaint that posts like this trigger anxiety (not OP, PPs). This was meant to be about strategies to help save lives in a low probability catastrophe. It’s ridiculous coming on here saying “I’ve read the thread and now I’m going to express that I’m upset / miffed / annoyed that it’s made me anxious”. What is a poster to do? Not ever write anything in case someone finds it triggers their anxiety?

Trying to lower a baby inside a duvet out a window is not a great idea the cover isn't the right length. It's likely to result in a drop injury and potentially you falling out as you realise the baby is being dropped to far.
A wool blanket (wet if possible) draped over you both and then getting out as fast as possible. If you can't do that a room with a window and blocking the door with fabric (wet if possible).

Please get advice about preparing for emergencies from somewhere reputable. www.london-fire.gov.uk/safety/the-home/escape-plan/escape-plan-blocks-of-flats/

Our fire safety plan is to open a window as wide as it will go, throw everything soft and grabbable (pillows, clothes, bedding etc) and lower the children out before letting them go. It's a terrifying prospect but one we should all plan for, even though it's scary to even think of it.

Rope ladders are really really difficult to climb down and up, especially if they’re not tethered at the other end.

we have a collapsible fire safety ladder for our top room, advise you look in to one of those instead

Shocked that so many here don’t have a fire escape plan at all and don’t want to think about one essentially because it’s just very unpleasant and stressful… it could save your families’ lives! My parents always told us how to get out in an emergency and safe ways down via outside if we needed.

We have a fire extinguisher in our kitchen and a couple of fire blankets in the house.

Its far more stressful if you don’t have any in place IMO! It’s a very small thing to plan which could have the biggest impact on your life. I think it’s really important to educate even young children on how to exit buildings safely in a fire emergency.

if you have zero in place in your house, please reconsider xx

Ah thanks for this thread OP, just been down to check and I’d left my outdoor Christmas lights switched on.

Also thanks to the PP who mentioned a rope ladder, I’d never have thought to look for one of those!

So many people against planning for a fire 😔. We have firefighters visit my reception class and they tell them to ask their parents what they should do in a fire (I.e. you should have a plan and your children should know it). A previous poster said this idea was ridiculous because you would freeze in panic in a fire, that's why you should have a plan!

Yes, this causes anxiety and it's hard to think about our loved ones being in danger BUT having a plan does reduce the anxiety. We have smoke and CO2 alarms in each room of the house, fire ladders ready to use in each bedroom upstairs, fire extinguishers on each level of the house.

We have a two year old and I am wondering how we talk about fire safety and make a plan with them at this age. How do you talk about something that is scary in an age appropriate way? Or do you wait until they are older and can understand a bit more?

Very good tips on this tread. Just ordered a fire blanket for our kitchen and have set a reminder to check our smoke alarms. This might be silly but I am wondering if there is a way to safely mimic a fire to see if the alarms go off? Our kitchen alarm doesn't go off even when our kitchen is smokey from cooking so I am wondering if we should get more or different alarms.

To be fair the OP should have labeled the thread better and I’m not sure keeping a spare duvet cover in your kids room is the best advice. Things like checking you turned everything off before going to bed, setting a reminder to check smoke alarms, buying a fire blanket, etc. are better.