Essential Fire Safety Equipment: How to Prepare for Emergencies

Is your household ready to handle an unexpected fire? Believe it or not, homes are highly susceptible to fires when you consider all the electricity and appliances being used in them all the time.

Several different types of fires could break out at any moment, such as kitchen grease fires, electrical fires, combustible metal fires, and wood fires. If you don’t have essential fire safety equipment readily available to manage such fires, your home could suffer irreparable damage. Not only that, but you or others in your home could incur injuries, respiratory illnesses, or even death.

Below are the most essential pieces of fire safety equipment that can help you prepare for fire emergencies at your home.

1) Fire Extinguishers

Fire extinguishers are the most essential fire safety equipment for your home. They can help you put out small fires before they spread throughout your home and cause significant damage. It is best to keep a fire extinguisher in every room of your home that is susceptible to fires, such as your kitchen, garage workshop, bedroom, and living room.

A fire extinguisher is simple to operate. All you must do is pull the pin to unlock the lever and then squeeze the handle to spray the extinguishing agent onto the fire. Different fire extinguishers use varying agents, such as sodium bicarbonate, water, foam, dry powder, or dry chemicals.

Fire extinguishers have different classes and ratings to signify which types of fires they can put out the best. The five primary fire extinguisher classes include:

• Class A – Common fires from ordinary combustibles like clothing, wood, and paper.
• Class B – Fires from burning flammable liquids and gases like petrol and propane
• Class C – Electrical fires caused in appliances, computers, and electronics
• Class D - Fires resulting from combustible metals catching on fire, such as lithium and magnesium
• Class K – Kitchen-based fires from things like cooking oil and grease catching on fire

Which types of fires are likely to happen in your house? Consider acquiring a different class of fire extinguisher for each room in your home where a specific type of fire might break out.

2) Fire Blankets

Fire blankets, also known as emergency fire extinguisher blankets, are special types of blankets that you can put over your body to protect yourself against a fire. They are made of fire-resistant material that can withstand temperatures of up to 1076℉, depending on the material and thickness.

There are a couple of ways that you can use a fire blanket. First, as stated, you can put the fire blanket over your body to shield yourself from catching on fire or burning yourself. You should do this to safely escape your home if a fire is blocking the only exit where you can leave.

Second, you can use a fire blanket to try to extinguish a small fire by attempting to smother it with the blanket. This often works with kitchen-based grease or cooking oil fires, but it can also work with chemical or metal-based fires. 

Fire blankets are lightweight and easy to store anywhere in your home. It is best to keep a separate one in your kitchen, garage, bathroom, bedroom, and other places where you think the risk of fire is high.

3) Respirators

Fires can do more than burn you if you get close to them. They can also cause you to develop respiratory conditions if you inhale too much fiery smoke.

Remember that fires will emit smoke that can quickly consume the rooms of your home. Fire smoke may contain all kinds of hazardous airborne elements, such as soot, ash, carbon monoxide, aldehydes, and volatile organic compounds. If you inhale these elements, you could develop lung disease, heart disease, or potentially even die.

Respirators or gas masks are a great way to protect yourself against the threat of fiery smoke. They can help filter out the dangerous contaminants in the smokey air so that it poses a lower risk to your health.

The best respirators for fire smoke protection will provide a full-face mask that is resistant to organic vapor and particulate matter. So, look for these features when shopping for respirators.

4) Smoke Detectors

Most modern homes have smoke detectors on the ceilings. If your home doesn’t have smoke detectors, please make the effort to install them as soon as possible.

Smoke detectors can be lifesavers because they sound a loud alarm whenever they detect smoke within the room they are in. So, if you are asleep or in some other room without any awareness of a fire breaking out, the alarm sound will alert you to the situation immediately.

Don’t forget to periodically replace the batteries in your smoke alarms to keep them active. Many people forget or neglect to replace their smoke alarm batteries because of the inconvenience involved. But if it could save your life, isn’t it worth it?

5) Fire Resistant Doors

You may think that installing fire-resistant doors in your home is a bit excessive, but they can reduce the spread of a fire breakout. Fire-resistant doors can be made of steel, glass, fiberglass, or treated wood that help prevent fire from spreading to high-risk rooms and environments in your home.

Most importantly, fire-resistant doors can provide you with a safe path to exit your home. Even if there is fire spreading all around the doors, there won’t be any fire on the doors. So, that will allow you to get out of your home without getting burned.

Conclusion

The best time to prepare for fire emergencies is right now. Stock up on the essential fire safety equipment outlined above so that you and your family are ready to save your lives if a fire breaks out in your home. 

Parcil Safety is the premier provider of essential fire protection equipment, such as respirators, air filters, and fire blankets. It is a good place to start shopping for fire safety equipment today.