Expert Advice: Follow These Fire Safety Tips
Erika Leader-Young is a firefighter/paramedic and a public education coordinator. One of her biggest jobs is helping folks understand how they can take simple measures to avoid home fires.
Erika Leader-Young can tell you from first-hand experience how a fire can disrupt your life—or take your life away. Leader-Young is a firefighter/paramedic with the New Lenox Fire Protection District. She has served as the district’s public education coordinator for two years in a full-time capacity and nearly twice that long counting part-time work. And she knows how quickly fires spread and how they can turn deadly, too. More than 3,500 Americans die each year in fires and 18,300 are injured, according to the U.S. Fire Administration. And Leader-Young said an overwhelming number of fires occur in the home. “Fire doubles in size every 17 seconds, ” she said. “People can go on YouTube and see how quickly it spreads. We did a side-by-side …
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Mike F.
3:33 pm on Thursday, December 27, 2012
My escape routes: either of the stairwells, or if those are blocked, seal the doors with wet towels, go into my bedroom (which faces the parking lot of my condo complex), hang a bedsheet out the window and wait for the fire department. Also, I will have my cell phone with me so I can have the 911 operator relay my information. more ›