WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2008 at 7:00 PM

EDITH stands for "Exit Drills In The Home."  A majority of the nearly 4,000 fire related deaths that occur every year happen in the home during normal sleeping hours.  A planned and practiced exit plan can reduce this number.

Residential smoke detectors and the planning and practice of exit drills in the home has helped to reduce the number of lives lost to fire in recent years.  The number of fires has not been reduced, nor has the number of burn injuries.  For these reasons it is important to be always prepared to respond to a dangerous fire.

Fire often allows only three or four minutes of escape time.  Not knowing what to do or behaving irrationally can be deadly.  Prepare a Home Fire Escape Plan that shows two ways out of every room.  Have the entire family practice exiting and meeting at the designated meeting place.

q                 Check the smoke detector.  Is it working properly?  Press the test button on your smoke detector to signal the start of your escape practice.

q                 Test your secondary emergency exits.  Make sure you can open windows and remove screens and storm windows from inside.

q                 Consider the use of folding escape ladders from second story windows.  Metal ones are available commercially, but remember people must be agile to use them.

q                 Practice using emergency exits in the dark.  Keep a flashlight next to every bed.

q                 Teach your family to roll out of bed, crawl to bedroom door and feel door to see if it is hot; remembering to stay low in smoke to avoid toxic gases, and to crawl to exits.

q                 Arrange a meeting place outside the home.  Make sure everyone knows to get out quickly and go to the meeting place.  No one should reenter a smoke filled building.

q                 In a real emergency call the fire department from a neighbor's home.

Please take the time to prepare an escape plan for your home and participate in the EDITH exercise during Fire Prevention Week as a family.  It could save your life or the lives of those you love.