South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue are giving home fire safety advice to thousands of mums-to-be.
The scheme gives new mums a thermometer with fire safety advice printed on them. This tells parents when their baby’s room is at the right temperature and has advice on home fire safety and keeping smoke free homes.
Sarah Broadbent, high risk co-ordinator for the service, said: “This latest project will see important fire safety messages delivered at a busy time when basic home safety issues could easily be forgotten.”
It wasn’t long ago since an image shared by South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue was picked up by the national papers. It features an oven stuffed full of chocolates, biscuits, and bags-for-life, which was discovered during a home safety check.
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Our Thoughts
This shouldn’t need saying, but never use an oven as a cupboard to store items in your kitchen. If you need more storage space, consider investing in a few extra units.
It doesn’t matter whether you use your oven or not, it isn’t a good idea. Should the oven get turned on accidentally with all those items inside, it wouldn’t take long for a fire to take hold. Plus, think of all that melted chocolate.
On the whole, many of us are a lot better at preventing fire in our own homes.
And this is something we should be teaching to our children as early as possible.
Around half of home fires are caused by cooking accidents. So to best prevent one, you should never leave food cooking unattended. You need to always be on hand to react in case something does go wrong.
A fire blanket and small extinguisher in the kitchen are the best tools at your disposal to help in the event of a fire.
But it is also important to stop little, inquisitive hands, from causing fires. That’s why you should never leave children by themselves in the kitchen. And installing child guards on the stove and oven will help to prevent any accidents.
Also, avoid having candles, matches, and lights laying around where they can reach them. Not only will this stop them causing a fire accidentally, but also prevents them from harming themselves.
And even though it may be easier said than done when you have young children, keep fire escape routes clear of toys and other obstructions. They could prevent or slow down your exit at a time when every second counts.
When they are old enough, you should also teach them what do if there is a fire.
Smoke alarms are essential, with at least one of every floor of your home. And when they hear one, they should quickly and safely get out of the building and not go back inside. Perhaps tell them to go to a neighbour so they can dial 999.
But also, if they see smoke or fire, they should know to immediately come and tell a grown up.
It’s important that they should never hide, and do all they can to raise the alarm and get out. By practising an emergency exit, it will be less scared and panicked for them should they ever need to do it for real.
And if your means of exit is blocked, trapping your family upstairs, an escape ladder will provide an additional way of getting out. But practice putting it out the window so you’re not doing so for the first time in a panic.