Fire and Emergency New Zealand offer free home fire safety visits

Fire and Emergency New Zealand fire risk management officer Anna Gordon.

It's one of those life skills kids are often better at than us adults – fire safety.

But help is at hand. Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ) offers free home fire safety visits.

The visits are about reducing the risk of fire for families and communities, Palmerston North fire risk management officer Anna Gordon says. Part of that risk reduction is identifying what the risks are in homes.

A group of firefighters can visit your home to provide information about keeping everyone safe, check the location of smoke alarms and that they are working, install them if required, and check escape plans are in place.

When a fire starts it becomes dark and smokey very fast and people can get disoriented, Gordon says. Often people will automatically try to escape a fire using the front or back door they use every day but a closer door such as a sliding door in the lounge could be the best option.

Escape plans allow people to assess before a fire what is the best exit from each room, she says. Firefighters will also check everyone in the household knows the escape plan and the safe meeting place.

Just like it's a good idea to check smoke alarms at the start and end of daylight saving, they are also good times to practise your escape plan, especially if you have children.

We do fire drills at school and work but home is where we spend most of our time, Gordon says.

About half of New Zealand's house fires occur in homes without working smoke alarms.

In the past 12 months, FENZ attended 157 house fires in Manawatū. Of these, nearly half did not have a working smoke alarm.

FENZ recommends photoelectric smoke alarms as they take away the need to check the batteries. The batteries in these alarms last five to 10 years and once they have reached the end of their life the alarm will beep constantly until the entire alarm is replaced.

Gordon says smoke alarms are like a nose sniffing for smoke every 15 seconds. When people are asleep they cannot smell smoke, may not hear it and won't see it so smoke alarms are critical for early warning of a fire. It takes about three minutes for a house fire to become deadly and five minutes for it to be unsurvivable.

"Fires get real, fast. The smoke from a fire is very disorienting and makes it hard to see and think."

The home fire safety visits allow the advice to be tailored to each household's circumstances, for example a two-storey home, a family member with mobility issues.

"If we can reduce fire then we are reducing the risk to our community."

While indoor fires are generally enclosed now, fire risks previous generations didn't face are overloaded multiboards and cellphones charging. Damaged lithium batteries can also be a fire risk.

"The way we live has changed so while it's taken away from dangers in the home it's probably added to some too," Gordon says.

To book a free home fire safety visit, ring 0800 693 473.

Make your household escape plan here.