What if it was your house?

[TommyB]

I had an interesting call last night (actually this morning). Our dept (along with our neighboring town's dept on automatic aid)got dispatched to a fire alarm activation at a residence. It didn't come as too much of a suprise, even though it was 0230. You see, it was my residence the call was at. Our smoke detector had gone off, and since it is tied in to our monitored alarm system the alarm company contacted the psap first, per their protocol, prior to calling my house. I confirmed there was no fire w/the alarm company, and was just getting ready to call dispatch to make sure they didn't page it out, but they beat me to it. I cancelled everyone right away, so all that happened was that I woke a bunch of guys up and will be taking some ribbing for a while. What really concerned me after the fact was my reaction and that of my families to the alarm. I am a captain in our volunteer fire dept and an emt, and have done the fire safety day thing at the local elementary school with the fire safety trailer several times. When that alarm went off, I was running around the house trying to figure out what the hell that noise was. If there had actually been a fire in the house I'm not sure how we would have fared. I did take the opportunity afterwards to make sure that my wife and daughter did know that if this happens again to get out of the house immediately and go to our meeting place. It was pretty scary when I told them this that both of them asked where our meeting place is! I realized that this is one of those things that we teach the kids in school, but I had neglected to follow through on it at home. How many of us are guilty of the same thing? I know there is going to be an unscheduled (for my wife and daughter) test of our alarm in the near future.

[Kelly Tool]

TommyB i under stand your point. I think it has to do with a subconsious feeling that because we are firefighters that we are protected from haveing a fire in our own home. This leads us to believe that we can protect our families when in truth we are just as vunerable as the rest of the public. You are right in that we need to make sure that our families understand how to get out, if our own families can't do it how can we teach others in our prevention programs, that would be hypocritical. Stay safe, and be prepared

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Put the wet stuff on the red stuff!

[Dickey]

I totally agree!! I have to share a good story.

I was once babysitting my nephew who is 6yrs old and my neice who is 8yrs old. I was making supper and something boiled over causing some pasta to fall on the burner of the stove. Before I could get the pasta out of burner, the smoke detector had sounded. The kids got all excited because they could do a fire drill in the home. They crawled low on the floor and the three of us went outside to their meeting place and took a head count.
It was later learned that they had learned to do a "home fire drill" whenever the smoke detector goes off at the house. They were taught that by the local volunteer fire dept. I was so proud of my niece and nephew that they remembered everything what the fire inspector taught them until my brother told me the next day they went to school and told eveyone that Uncle Jason cooks just like Dad does!!!!!

Stay safe!