Fire Safety for Preschoolers

9/30/2021 (Permalink)

If fire should take over and do damage in your home, SERVPRO of Conyers/Covington is here to help.

When it comes to fire safety, it’s likely that you’re generally aware of the important steps to take in case of a fire.

You’ve been told about stop, drop and roll, emergency plans, calling 9-1-1 and the like for so long now that the knowledge is pretty engrained. And yet, even with after the reinforcement of safety campaigns and fire drills, many adults still panic in real-life fire scenarios.

So knowing that children have taken in much less information and are much more likely to freeze or panic in an emergency, how much more important is it for us to take special care to teach and inform them about fire safety? Sadly, children younger than age 5 are twice as likely to die in fires as adults and older kids.

Here are a few essential things preschoolers need to be taught about how to think and react in a fire situation:

Firefighters aren’t scary.

Young children can be spooked by first responders—hey, if somebody four times your size walked up to you in a weird costume, you’d be intimidated, too. Familiarizing young children with who firefighters are and why they wear what they wear can keep them from becoming frightened when they come face to face with one.

You can also take a tour of local fire stations and teach them how firefighters can help kids in the event of a fire. Trust us, they’ll love the trucks.

Stay under the smoke.

When’s the last time you crawled around on your hands and knees? It’s probably been a while, but to your preschooler this style of moving through the house isn’t all that far removed. Teach them to assume the crawling position to stay under the smoke that comes from a fire in the house.

Tell them why breathing in smoke is dangerous, and crawl around with them—you can even make a game of it.

Stop, drop and roll.

A young child’s first reaction to having clothing catch fire will probably be to run, which can cause the fire to spread more quickly. Teach your preschooler to cover his or her face, drop to the floor, and roll side to side until the fire is safely smothered and put out.

Repeat this often, because it’s an unnatural action.

Nobody wants to think about fires burning in the home, but it’s an unfortunate reality. If fire should take over and do damage in your home, SERVPRO is here to help.