By Janelle Foskett
The UL Firefighter Safety Research Institute (FSRI) released two new videos today to align with the start of Fire Prevention Month.
The first video drives awareness of how little time there is to escape a home fire, and urges people to plan ahead by having working smoke alarms, knowing their escape plan, and to #CloseBeforeYouDoze.
Fire departments are encouraged to share the following three life-saving steps to protect their community members in the event of a home fire:
- Smoke alarms: Have working smoke alarms on every floor of your home, including in and outside every sleeping area. Check your smoke alarms monthly and replace them every 10 years. Smoke alarms give you and your loved ones the earliest warning possible that there is a fire.
- Escape plan: Have an escape plan and practice it; know how to get out if there is a fire.
- Closed doors: A closed door can be an effective barrier against deadly levels of carbon monoxide, smoke and flames, and may give you more time to respond to the smoke alarm. In fact, there can be a 900-degree difference in room temperature between a room with an open door and one with a closed door, with the open-door room reaching temperatures of 1,000 degrees or more. In 2018, UL FSRI released its Dramatic Difference video demonstrating this comparison.
The second video is a new side-by-side experiment video that shows a comparison of natural vs. synthetic furnished rooms, highlighting how fast fire spreads in today’s fire environment. Fire is faster today due to synthetic materials, lighter construction materials and open floor plans. This video stems from a series of experiments examining fire behavior and provides valuable insights for first responders.
UL FSRI explained the video update: “Since the original comparison video was shared in 2009, UL FSRI has repeated the same experiment several times with similar results in terms of flashover times between the natural and synthetic furnished rooms. The flashover data from those experiments has been incorporated into this new video that has been captured in much crisper detail than its predecessor, thanks to vast video technology enhancements.”
Fire departments are encouraged to download the comparison video to integrate into training efforts.
For more information on this research, visit the UL FSRI project page.
For more fire safety tips, please visit CloseYourDoor.org.
[Read next: Fire Prevention Week 2020 to focus on kitchen safety]