Can anyone recommend a rope/fire escape ladder?

[hester]

My children's bedrooms are on the second floor, with a low-level velux window for fire escape. I've been thinking of getting an emergency/rope ladder type thing to keep by that window, in case they need to climb out.

Has anyone any experience of these? Recommendations?

I had a Fire Safety visit from my local Fire Brigade a couple of months ago and asked a similar question.

The fire officer said that it was extremely unusual for people to have to escape from windows these days and in the event of a fire, we should close the bedroom door and pile the duvet and any other blankets etc against the bottom of the door.

As you are probably aware, smoke kills more people in house fires than fire itself. He also said that modern internal doors should protect the occupants of the room from heat/smoke for 30 minutes.

He pretty much told me not to bother with a ladder. HTH.

We have a ladder as we had open stairs from the lounge and personally I would not want to be waiting to be rescued when I can exit the house.

We have a kidde escape ladder, it lives in the drawer under my bed. Google is your friend [cgrin]

Many thanks, both. That's very interesting, YourCall, and makes me feel slightly less panicky! But I'm in the same position as you, Fizzy - open stairs from lounge; anything that goes off downstairs could be at the top of the house in minutes. I will get googling!

Interesting as I wondered about the 2nd floor too. So the fire chappy's idea was that the fire brigade would arrive before it had got dangerous enough?

Think I'd rather have the ladder and get out too.