Three minutes may not seem like a long time.
But a lot can happen in three minutes.
You can boil an egg in three minutes.
Or jog a quarter of a mile.
If you’re a boxer, you know that in one 3-minute round, you can throw – and get hit with – a lot of punches.
If there’s a fire at your house you’ll have MAYBE three minutes -- probably less – to survive. The first most important thing you should know about fire is that FIRE IS FAST.
A free-burning fire can easily double in size every 30 seconds. In three minutes, a fire can go from the size of a match to a “flashover” that ignites an entire room and everything in it, reaching temperatures of 1200 degrees F. No living thing in that room will survive.
Fire is fast, all right.
But smoke is even faster.
During that first three minutes, toxic smoke snakes its way through the structure, seeking the highest level, via the path of least resistance. Visibility can rapidly go from normal to zero. The fire, itself, might be in the basement, but the smoke will quickly make its way to upstairs bedrooms carrying deadly carbon monoxide. Of the approximately 3000-4000 friends and neighbors who lose their lives in fires every year, most die from smoke inhalation long before flames ever reach them…
The fire company I’m a member of is a volunteer company staffed by – you guessed it – volunteers. About 70% of the approximately 1 million firefighters in the U.S. are volunteers. Let’s use us as a more or less typical example.
There are no firefighters at the station on stand-by, ready to roll when an alarm come in. When you call 911, that call goes to the county dispatcher who summons (“tones out”) members of the appropriate fire company via the pagers we all carry. Firefighters must get to the station for the trucks and equipment before going to the scene of the call.
Let’s suppose your smoke alarm goes off and you call 911 within 30 seconds of the fire starting.
Let’s suppose from the time you dial 911 to the time the fire company gets toned out, only 45 seconds elapses.
We’re over one minute already.
Let’s suppose it only takes two minutes for our nearest firefighters to reach the station. We have a couple of members who live only a half mile away, and they’re fast.
Let’s say we roll out within 30 seconds of arriving at the station.
We’re up to 3 minutes and 45 seconds.
Let’s say you live only a mile from the station and road conditions are good and we arrive in one minute.
Each of our three fire trucks is designed to carry a driver and one other person. The driver stays with the vehicle and operates the pump. The other firefighter leaps out and grabs an SCBA (self contained breathing apparatus). Let’s say it takes no more than a minute for that firefighter to fully gear-up, break out a hoseline and be ready to attack the fire or search for victims.
It’s now been 5 minutes and 45 seconds since the fire started.
But two firefighters aren’t enough. It takes two guys to handle the hose. Two more to do a search and rescue. And that one guy to operate the pump. The first responders can’t do much until additional firefighters arrive, probably in their private vehicles. Once they’re on-scene they’ll need to gear up…
We’re already well past that critical three-minute mark by the time we can do anything to help you. And this is a BEST-CASE scenario.
No point in kidding ourselves.
The simple truth is that for that critical first three minutes, you’re on your own.
You’ll have to be able to self-rescue, if you’re going to survive. That boils down to three little words: GET OUT FAST.
And once you’re out, STAY OUT.
It isn’t the flames you see that will kill you; it’s the toxic gases you CAN’T see that will take you out. The fire may be relatively isolated, but the smoke isn’t. You don’t have to breath much of it before you’re disoriented, incapacitated, unconscious.
The best way to self-rescue is to have an emergency plan already in place, and make sure that you and every member of your household knows what to do in a worst-case scenario.
That means you have to PRACTICE it, not just TALK about it, and you’d better practice it more than once.
And practice in the dark.
Most deadly residential fires occur between midnight and 5 am. But even during the day, you may have to escape in zero-visibility conditions.
Remember, smoke rises. So the safest place is near the floor.
Teach your family to GET LOW AND GO.
Have two exits from every room. If one of those is a window, install an escape ladder and practice using it. Make sure that the smallest person in your home can reach it and that it’s easily accessible, no furniture or piles of domestic detritus in front of it.
Early detection is critical to your survival.
That means SMOKE ALARMS.
Be sure you have a working smoke detector on every floor and in every sleeping area. Install more of them than you think you need. Test them once a month. Replace the batteries twice a year.
This is the single most important thing you can do; it just about doubles your chances of survival.
And smoke detectors are cheap.
A lot cheaper than funerals.
Last weekend, at around 2:50 Sunday morning, fire engulfed a 2 story home in Richland, NY.
One person escaped.
8 people died, including 4 children, ranging from 6 months to ten years of age.
There were no smoke detectors in the building.
sj
