3 Common Mistakes Involving Household Fire Extinguishers And How To Avoid Them
The threat of a house fire is a common fear for many Australian homeowners. Every year, a large number of people are injured or perish in house fires and entire homes are destroyed. One of the vital keys to preventing fires is to have fire extinguishers in your home to quickly and efficiently put fires out before they rage out of control.
However, simply having a fire extinguisher in your home isn't enough. Here are three common mistakes made by homeowners regarding fire extinguishers and how to avoid them:
1. Not maintaining your fire extinguisher
Imagine that a fire starts in your home. You rush to grab your fire extinguisher but when you try to put out the fire, your fire extinguisher doesn't work. This nightmare scenario can be avoided by ensuring that your fire extinguisher is properly maintained.
Like any appliance, fire extinguishers require regular maintenance. An annual service by a qualified professional will ensure that your fire extinguisher is in top condition and ready to be effectively deployed if there's a fire. Regular maintenance can also recognise any elements that require repair or replacement or whether the fire extinguisher is too old to be reliable.
2. Not having the right number of fire extinguishers
Unless you have a very small home, a single fire extinguisher is unlikely to provide you with the adequate ability to quickly and safely put out a fire in your home. The rapid response needed to extinguish a fire before it is beyond your abilities to put out depends on having fast access to your extinguisher.
For example, if a fire breaks out in an upstairs room in your home and your extinguisher is in the kitchen, the time it takes to retrieve the extinguisher may be all a fire needs to get out of control. If you're not sure how many fire extinguishers are ideal for your home or where they should be located, a fire extinguisher professional can help you with this task.
3. Not knowing how to use your extinguisher
A fire extinguisher is useless in a house fire situation if the person who is confronted with the fire doesn't know how to operate it. Although all fire extinguishers have instructions attached to them, trying to do this as a fire burns is both stressful and a waste of the crucial time needed for swift intervention.
You can prevent this by ensuring that all members of your household have been taught how to use the fire extinguisher. This includes teenagers and school age children. It's worth having a lesson with a fire extinguisher professional to learn the proper way to use them. Following that, hold regular family refreshers on their use to keep the knowledge at the front of your minds.