Fire safety when visiting

[TortoiseT]

So we are staying with MIL ahead of a family get together in a holiday park later this week. Only a couple of nights because MiL has various eccentricities and staying with little kids can be quite stressful because of them. Her house is very cluttered with her inability to ever throw anything out. Yesterday evening we had an argument with my husband because I asked him to turn off the WiFi router overnight. It was warm to touch and connected to power through an old extension lead, which had lots of other things plugged into it as well. The problem is, apparently, that if you turn off the WiFi, a landline phone next to her bed in her bedroom upstairs, would start beeping. My husband had turned it off on our first night here, and apparently she had told him off yesterday morning because of the beeping. I told him to turn it off again last night, as I am very big on fire safety and one of my three kids was sleeping in the top bunk so I wasn’t going to take any risks. He told me he would rather not, because of the beeping. He agreed to plugging it straight into mains, instead of the extension lead. I then checked for fire alarms, and realised one of them (upstairs), was pulled out of the ceiling and the downstairs one had no batteries. Both look like they are from the 1980s. I put my foot down and told him to either creep in and take landline away from mum’s bedside (she has a mobile so she would have access to a phone overnight), or to turn WiFi off. I’d turned everything else off eg TV and tried to do washing machine but it didn’t have a safety switch and the didn’t manage to get into cupboard due to clutter. I am super safety aware because it just takes that one night when something sets on fire, and with the amount of clutter in her house, it would have awful consequences. I would have no qualms about going into my parents’ room to get a landline away and having to explain if they woke up, but my husband’s family don’t even wear pyjamas in front of each other, so entering his mum’s bedroom completely freaked him out. I told him I wouldn’t stay again until he would help her fix her fire alarms. Was I unreasonable?

I put my foot down and told him to either creep in and take landline away from mum’s bedside (she has a mobile so she would have access to a phone overnight)

This is SUPER creepy of you.

If the fire safety standards of the people who are hosting you are making feel like you can't risk your family sleeping there at night, the grown-up thing to do is to have an honest, kind and reasonable chat with your hosts about it, and if they don't agree to what you want to do and you're too concerned about the risk to stay then you politely excuse yourself off to a Travelodge for the night. You don't creep around switching things off and unplugging things in their house, especially after they have explicitly asked you not to.

I can’t believe you went around turning off appliances in someone else’s house!

You need to stay in a hotel in future. You can’t go around unplugging people’s WiFi.

I’ve worked in fire safety, and honestly I wouldn’t sleep in a house without modern fire alarms.

The thing that got me is she thought it was weird to not wear pyjamas in bed!

You're a guest!

Your options are suck it up or leave.

Remember he's also a parent so you don't get to decide the children can't stay

Thanks for these insights - this is exactly why I wanted to switch things off - each plug is overloaded with things that are all simultaneously turned on sleepy mode and plugged in. She lives in an old house, and I doubt the electrics have been done since the 1970’s.

For context - we live in an apartment building in London, which failed its’ fire safety - has internal fire walls between units and our flat only has one fire exit next to the kitchen, which is the most likely site of fire. When we had a fire safety visit from our local fire station, they advised we would be best protected by switching everything we can off, including the router, because our fire exits were not fool-proof and we’d want to minimise risk of fires. All our neighbours do the same. So it’s not because I’m extremely anxious, I am fire aware as a result of our visit from the fire service. We would have to somehow get our kids out of a third floor flat if a fire broke out. Luckily we have managed to sell and are moving out, but have spent many years living this way.

So at MIL’s, rather than making sure things are plugged straight into the main (think router, landline, radio, TV, charger all plugged into one 1970s exrension lead), I just thought I’d switch them off at the wall.

The lack of fire alarms caused me to want to minimise risk of fire even more, obviously, because we’d be screwed if there was a one with no alarms! Smoke rises so top bunks are more dangerous. We couldn’t just nip out and buy some, as we only realised lack of alarms at night and there are no 24/7 stores near there.

I’d be happy to have a conversation with MiL, but she has various quirks as mentioned before, so I have asked DH to discuss it.

I do various things to minimise danger in my life - wearing seatbelts, sticking to speed limits, not drinking insane amounts of alcohol and making sure fire exits are clear and alarms are working. I don’t think through statistics while doing this, it comes naturally to me. I am not anxious and hyperventilating, I just know what I need to do and do it. I consider MiL and my parents close enough family, having known them since my early 20’s, that I can put these boundaries in place with them. If my husband said he was not happy with my kids to stay at my parents house for a safety reason, I would understand and take it very seriously. Luckily my husband is on the same page and agrees and has now fixed the alarms and discussed having the fire service round to her house. We worry because she hosts her other grandchildren too, and various frail and elderly people. And she herself will have a hip replacement soon, so her mobility is and will not be great until she has fully recovered. I’m not being a creepy bitch- I care for my kids and their safety, and despite our differences, I do also care for her too.

If someone offered your kids a lift but the seatbelts were broken, wouldyou let them take a lift? For me, the same principle applies to fire safety. There are basic principles like not overloading your sockets and having working fire alarms most UK adults should be aware of. I wouldn’t consider it rude if a friend or a relative raised a safety issue about my property (which one or two have, staying in our flat for a London break with their small children).

Yes you sound unreasonable and yes you have serious issues to work through and hope three issues don't affect your children

You’d be ok with your children sleeping in a cluttered house, with overloaded sockets and no working fire alarms?

It really amazes me to see how many people think I am being unreasonable - probably tells something about the standards of UK fire awareness I guess! Maybe if I said in the 1980’s that I’d not want my kids to be in a house where people smoke, people would have given me similar comments and basically signing me off as a nutcase just for following relatively basic precautions considering the lack of working alarms.

Not comparable.
Seat belts are held to a legal standard.

And at the end of the day it's not your house. If you don't want to be there then leave. But you can't control anyone else.
If your husband wants to stay and wants his children to visit then this is a marital issue.

But you were outrageously rude to do what you did and push it and if I were him you'd have gotten a massive ear full.

So you would let your children sleep in a cluttered house, with 1970’s electrics and appliances, sockets overloaded with switched//standby electrics, with no working fire alarms?

I am genuinely curious, not just trying to be a bitch.

Luckily we both agreed re the fire safety due to our own living situation, but I think my husband was of the opinion that we could risk it for one night, whereas I was of the opinion that I would not want to risk it. So no marital issues here, he is talking to Mum and hopefully they can sort it for everyone’s safety. He is not the type to give an “ear full”, so I was spared of that experience.

Hopes and prayers to your husband.