Pretending sleep, waiting for the drill to begin
I have come to the definite decision that every household needs a fire escape plan....especially those with young children or many children....or many young children. Our house is laid out in such a way that the hallway is long and could easily separate the one and only passage between our bedroom and reaching any and all children. Frightened children could easily head down a burning hallway trying to reach parents in the chaos of smoke and loud alarms so we have taught them over time what to do in the event of a fire. We do fire drills regularly to assure that it is ingrained in them what to do and to assure that they know what the smoke alarm sounds like, what it means and how to escape without injury...leaving no one behind.
The other waiting half
We've trained that the person sleeping closest to the door, Grant, is responsible for making sure the bedroom door is shut, in the event it was left open to a middle of the night bathroom go-er, to give them more escape time. Grayson is first man out and responsible for getting to baby....or soon to be babies....in the nursery. Evye supervises the exit of everyone in the bedroom and aids in them making it out the window while Grayson breaks the nursery window and gets in. Aubrey is responsible for holding the younger ones' hands and guiding them all to their designated meeting spot. After the everybody bedroom has been cleared Evye meets Grayson at the nursery window so that Grayson can hand off baby, or babies, to her and they both run to meet everyone at the meeting spot. So far the longest it has taken with cranky, tired kids was 1:31 but usually they have everybody out and the house is empty in 58 seconds. Today I actually thought to get pictures of the whole event while we practiced.
The alarms go off. Grayson's already made it out the window.
Evacuating
Evye handing Gavin off to Aubrey since he can't quite jump out the window yet like the other boys can.
Getting to Ivye
Her rescuer
Handing her out to Evye
Everyone running to the meeting tree
Thumbs up. Everyone's accounted for. Time 58 seconds for house to be evacuated. 1:08 for everyone to meet and be accounted for.
Racing back in the summer sun after 4 drills to cold a/c, cups of ice water and fans.
3 comments:
We used to do fire drills as well. We were to meet at the mailbox out by the road.
When we got old enough that we were sometimes left at home we also had a what to do if someone breaks in drill.
I was just feeling convicted the other night that we really need to start doing fire drills. While we don't have a long hallway, our bedroom and the big kids' bedroom is separated from the little kids by the rest of the house. I have been thinking we might need to move the littles closer to us, but I think the answer might be as obvious as climbing back in through their window to get them. Never occurred to me before!
Those pics made me teary.WTG Mama!!
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