ISO, Insurance Services Office Inc., has a Public Protection Classification service that gauges a local fire departments ability to respond to fires. They collect information regarding the responsiveness and effectiveness of local fire departments, analyze the data using their Fire Suppression Rating Schedule (FSRS) and then assigns a Public Protection Classification from 1 to 10. [...]
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) estimates that over 94% of homes in North America have fire alarms but there are more homes with inactive, broken, or dead batteried smoke alarms than those without an alarm. The danger of having a broken or power dead smoke alarm is that you have the sense of security [...]
Second only to ensuring that all your smoke alarms have working batteries is the fact that you need to position those little guys intelligently. If you don’t have a sense of where you should put them, you should consider following the National Fire Protection Association Life Safety Code 101. They recommend that you put a [...]
Thursday, September 20, 2007
So you have a safe that’s fireproof, is it waterproof too? The reason I ask is because where there’s fire, they’re often going to be a lot of water as well because when the firefighters arrive they will be spraying water everywhere. Not only that but they’ll be spraying a lot of water everywhere because [...]
Saturday, September 1, 2007
In addition to theft of possessions, fire is another huge concern for insurance companies when it comes to college students and something you should talk to your student child. In general, fires are caused by two things: cooking and candles. That’s why, if you review your child’s dorm rules you’ll likely see that both cooking [...]
It’s the summer and that means you’re probably going to a barbecue or two and perhaps hosting a few grilling events at your home. Given the dangers of open flame and the home, I think it’s important to review some grilling safety tips so that you don’t burn your house or apartment down.
Grill outside. Don’t [...]
In my last article about fire resistant safes, I neglected to explain how to read the safe ratings. The first number of the rating, which will be 350 or 125, will be the maximum internal temperature of the safe for the time period listed in the second number. So a 350-2 rating for a safe [...]
In the last post, I talked about the two different types of safes: fire resistant and burglar resistant (plus the combo fire/burglar resistant safe, which is really just an amalgamation of the two). This time I’ll focus in on the first of the two types, the fire resistant safe. A fire resistant safe is not [...]
The most important thing to remember is that you should only be trying to extinguish small fires and have just started. If the fire is strong and / or big, get out now and call for help. Don’t be foolish trying to be a hero.
Secondly, if you are using a fire extinguisher, remember to always [...]
There are four types of fire extinguishers and each one is designed for a different class of fire. In the previous fire extinguisher post, I mostly was talking about Class A and Class B fire extinguishers because those are the types of fires more commonly found in the home.
Class A extinguishers are designed to [...]