How Safe is Your Life From Fire Outbreaks?

Wouldn’t it be nice if all fires were like the kind Moses of the Holy Bible found in his search for his lost sheep?

                               

That’s far from the case.

Back when i was child, my dad had bought a new television set and a number of household gadgets. My siblings and i took out the Styrofoam and like children we played "experiment" and came up with lots of crazy stuffs. One time we stumbled upon an idea suggested by one of my brothers. It involved immersing the Styrofoam in petrol, oh boy! That was it! Straight up, we tried it out and mehn!!! Was it fun!

The way a small portion of petrol could melt a huge chunk of Styrofoam just felt amazing; it kind of looked like the venom of a giant alien melting through skyscrapers just like we saw in Hollywood movies, i loved it more than any previous idea we had. Dipping more Styrofoam into the mix felt like pushing croutons through whipped whipping cream; I could kill for that moment and NO ONE took my place when I was settled dipping, the smooth slide was nothing but pure magical fun.

A sad moment came when we exhausted the available Styrofoam and ransacked the whole house for more but found none. What were we to do with the sticky odd smelling goo? Suddenly, we had better idea! We would use it as glue; problem was it wasn't thick enough and would not hold things together quite well. Our next mission was to make it thick. For our first task, we put our glue in the sun with hope that some of the petrol would evaporate and leave the glue thicker, thirty minutes later which felt like eternity; our glue had absolutely no difference. We needed drastic measures. We carried the tin containing our home made glue to a stove in the kitchen. Fire was surely going to effect the drying change we desired.

I had to be the one stirring so that I could notice all the magic that came with the thickening process. The magic came all right but all I remember when I came to was all three of my brothers were gone, I heard screaming of "Larry's head is on fire" and fire all around the kitchen. Apparently I had fainted from shock of the explosion and my brothers had run for their lives... The fire was put out with soapy water and there was no "major" damage.

A similar incident occurred recently, this time no Styrofoam was involved and everything in the kitchen was lost to the fire. A number of people sustained life threating burns, some of which are my friends and colleagues, hence the essence for this article. To think that I escaped with my life struck a chord to sound awareness about portable fire extinguishers many are negligent about.

Eggs have got grades, vegetables have quality and fire, well fire has got classes. The classification is done based on the cause or source of the fire.

The kitchen is one place that is so prone to fire out breaks. Luckily with a few simple tips any small accident can be successfully halted from being a major catastrophe.

#1 Remain calm

Suppress your tendency to panic at the sight of fire that is burning in a place other than a burner. If the fire is small, throw a large wet towel over it and ensure it is extinguished before leaving the scene.

#2 Always have a Portable Fire extinguisher in place

The use of portable fire extinguishers is literally as easy as A, B, C, D and E. Most of the time you don’t have to get all the way to D!

                               

The chart above shows the fire types; from left to right are the classes (types) of fire: A, B, C, D and E

Using the chart, can you tell the type of fire that had my brothers screaming “Larry’s head is on fire”?

#3 Know how to use a Portable Fire extinguisher

Having a portable fire extinguisher lying around if you don’t know how to use one doesn’t do you or anyone any good. Be sure to know how to kill a fire with one. A simple acronym that you can use is PASS

                                       

P-Pull Pin:

Pull the pin at the top of the extinguisher to break the seal.

A-Aim:

Standing at a safe distance. Aim the nozzle towards the base of the fire.

S-Squeeze:

Squeeze the handles to discharge the extinguishing agent inside.  To stop discharge, release the handles.

S-Sweep:

Sweep the nozzle from side to side as you approach the fire, directing the extinguishing agent at the base of the flames.

Caution: If you have the perception that a fire is bigger than you. DO NOT EMBARK on a hero’s journey to fight the fire. Flee the scene, raise an alarm and leave the fighting for trained firefighters

Use this tips and feel free to add more, we would love to hear from you. Thanks for reading.

The BasicPulse team.