Dorm Fire Safety - Kids Safe At College

When I took Princess Five to college, I checked the smoke alarms throughout her apartment.

When I moved Princess Three to a new college a few years back, every smoke alarm in the apartment had been removed and there were just wires hanging down in the apartment as the occupants had complained that whenever they would cook, the smoke detectors would go off in the place so eventually, they all took them down.

I wanted to knock on all the apartment doors and take a survey of how many of those apartments didn't have working smoke detectors. I think we all assume that anyone renting out apartments would be responsible and have working smoke detectors and working fire extinguishers.

I dated a fireman once and he told me that most people do two main things wrong with fire extinguishers. They place them close to the stove and if there is a fire, they can't functionally get to them because it isn't safe. He suggested putting it in a drawer across the kitchen from the stove where I could quickly get to it.

The second situation is that the white powder chemical in fire extinguishers settles to the bottom of the extinguisher and becomes like a hard powder cake and isn't functional when it does sit and get to that point. He said that you need to take down the extinguisher and tip it upside down and shake it until that powder is flowing freely in the canister. Sometimes, you even need to tap the bottom hard to shake the "cake" loose. I actually tipped mine upside down for a few days allowing the cake to move to the top of the extinguisher and then shook it for a few minutes breaking up the heavy, hard cake that had formed and settled on the bottom of the extinguisher.

You can actually feel the heaviness at the bottom of the extinguisher when this happens. Until that point, I had never shaken mine and due to that, it was super heavy at the bottom and it took some time shaking to get it to loosen up. This is a similar thing that happens to the minerals in a hot water heater. It just happens. 

Since that that time with Princess Three's apartment, I always check out the smoke detectors making sure they work at each new place. I shake the fire extinguishers while I am there loosening the powder just in case there is an incident. 

Hopefully my girls would all be able to get out through a window to safety if needed but I pray it never comes to that. It was interesting that a few weeks back, Princess Three helped her cousin move into college near where she works many hours from his family. She was headed on a trip with friends this weekend and I asked her to pick up something for me at my brothers and drop it off to me on her way to camping with friends. 

When she met me and dropped it off, she said my brother asked her a funny question when she told him she helped his son move into his apartment at college. He asked her if his son had a window to escape if he needed to get out of the apartment quickly? 

I have to be honest that I didn't think of checking all these things when my oldest two went to college but dated the fireman and then I had a woman contact me about a smoke detector I had posted on my blog and told me about a woman who lost all five of her kids and her fiancé due to a smoke fire that killed them all. I also had my mothers home burn to the ground, my cousins house burn a year later and my oldest brother has had two rental apartments have fires. The sad part was that my mothers home had just been dropped from her insurance company due to the high cost of rebuilding it so it burned and we lost everything. 

I think with all those situation, it has made us a bit more aware that sad and tragic things do happen. A high school friend had her house burn last winter and then the pipes froze and ruined anything left in the house. 

It can't hurt to be prepared and have your child at college have a fire or earthquake evacuation plan and having them know where the exits, smoke detectors and fire extinguisher are placed and how to use them. 

I hope none of you or yours need the information I am sharing but I bet you can sleep better knowing that you have checked the detectors and shaken the extinguishers! 

I checked two of the girls homes this last month and both have expired extinguishers. I am going to call and discuss it with the owners and hopefully they will replace the extinguishers with newer ones just to be safe! If not, it would be worth $100 to give them one they can put in their rooms just in case they are needed. 

Have a BLESSED Day!