How To Create an Emergency Escape Plan With First Alert

Tell all ya friends and neighbors!

Easy steps on how to create an emergency escape plan for your family at home

Thank you First Alert for sponsoring this post. Plan, practice, and repeat your escape plan with First Alert!

It shouldn’t be news on this HOME RENOVATION BLOG that we love decorating and renovating our house. We’ve got a lot of hard work and blood, sweat and tears in here and I would hate to see something happen to that. From little things like our tiny pantry remodel to giant projects like our guest bathroom remodel.

To be honest, I’ve never really thought about any kind of emergency escape plan until I literally watched our neighbor’s house go up in flames a year ago when their pool house caught on fire. My husband and another neighbor actually ended up helping the firemen when they came. And would you believe they are STILL rebuilding and still are not living in the house?

At least I don’t feel alone. According to First Alert research done in 2016, only 43% of homeowners have a fire escape plan and only 33% have actually even talked about it with their families. Since we have a four year old who likes to have her hands in everything we do nowadays, this was the as good a time as ever.

Steps To An Emergency Escape Safety Plan

Install Good Smoke Detectors

Wanna know a confession? I’ve never installed a fire alarm. Everywhere I’ve lived has already had them. But we have 2 floors and lots o’ rooms up in this house so we had several that didn’t have any. So, when I found out how easy this was, I was pleasantly surprised. In under 5 minutes, we had that knocked out!

A couple pro tips about smoke detectors – remember to test them regularly to make sure they’re working and make sure to change the batteries every six months.

Test and Install Your Ladder (If you have a two story house)

If something happens with a fire and your stairs are blocked, having another escape is absolutely CRUCIAL.

The First Alert Escape Ladder is awesome. You store it in this box, but when in use, you simply take it out all folded up and hang it out your window. Once it’s hung outside the window, undo the velcro strap and it will drape all the way down to the ground.

Draw out your emergency escape plan

Full disclosure, it may be very difficult to draw straight lines when trying to draw your own fire escape plan when you have a 4 year old asking if she can color on it yet? “Daddy can I color? Hey, is it time to color yet? Oh okay but when can I color this? Daddy, is it okay if I color yet?” I’m absolutely not exaggerating here.

I’ve actually included a PDF version that you can download and print for yourself!

Actually Practice your emergency escape plan

Practice. Plan. Repeat. You’ll want to practice at least twice a year! Our meeting place is the stop sign across from our house which is in a cul-de-sac so the walk over will be safe and our daughter is obsessed with street signs so this is easy for her to recognize which is another reason we chose it.

So, don’t make me feel so alone. Please tell me I’m not the only one who JUST thought about an escape plan. Do you have one? If so, have I missed any vital steps? Tell me in the comments below. Stay safe, fam!