FIREPROOF YOUR HOME

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Next, plan and practice home fire drills during both day and night. Children should be taught to hold hands and follow orders even while half awake. Your lights may be out, so keep a strong flashlight beside your bed. It's also a good idea to install power-failure night lights in electric outlets along your escape routes. Radio Shack No. 61-2772 sells for less than $15. As stairs may be afire, identify at least two escape routes from upper floors.

Lacking back stairs, invest in an escape ladder or two. Be sure that all ground-floor windows open easily; otherwise, train the family how to break glass and get out quickly. Contact your fire department for "tot-savers," the reflective placards affixed to the inside of kids' rooms so fire fighters can locate them quickly at night. However, it is essential to remove the stickers if and when you move. If you don't, you may he putting fire fighters' lives in great danger.

SAFETY TIP: Loose sawdust that is floating around can ignite and explode. Keep your wood shop clean and dust-free. Never light any type of flame there.

Getting people out of a burning home is the first order of business. Train your people to move quickly out of the house and to never go back in. Let the firemen do their job or let the place burn. A house can be replaced; you can't. As I discovered, you violate this rule at your peril even if the fire is out. After I was sure that the cellar fire was not only under control but in the hands of the fire fighters, I reentered to help the fire fighters locate the fire chute between studs in the interior wall. My family saw me go in and became concerned when I didn't come out immediately. I was thoroughly chewed out by Debra for providing a very bad example for my kids.

Be as prepared as you can to fight beginning fires yourself. For decades now I have kept 150 feet of garden hose attached to a spigot, coiled, and ready to go outside in summer. In winter it sits beside the water pump in the cellar-though when I needed it in a fire emergency, I forgot it was there. But don't rely on the garden hose; it may not stretch far enough to the fire and could kink in the night, freeze up in cold weather, or lose pressure. Besides, water is good only against fires in wood and fabrics. It is ineffective against the major element in electrical fires and can actually spread a chemical blaze.

No home should be without at least one extinguisher especially if the home is heated with wood. Permanently locate one (with the hanging fixture that comes with it) on a wall handy to the wood stove. Put the other at the top of the basement stair or in the entryway between living quarters and your utility closet or other location of your heating-plant and electric or gas utility entries. Hang a third beside your bed.

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