FIREPROOF YOUR HOME

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Get the largest capacity canisters you can handle easily. Halogen is a good modern universal extinguishing agent, but canisters are small-adequate perhaps for a wood-stove pipe or auto engine fire. For the main house, get conventional extinguishers with an A/B/C rating-meaning they will put out wood, chemical, and electrical fires. Get them with pressure gauges on the head. Check frequently; if the pressure drops out of the green area on the gauge, have them recharged. If you don't live near a recharging center, replace them. Read and memorize instructions and practice with the extinguishers so you can use them at a moment's notice.

Finally-but most important-have the fire department's number posted conspicuously by your phone. Don't hesitate to use it any time you see or smell smoke.

Fire Prevention

All this is preparation for a fire. Now, how do you best prevent one? Don't leave matchbooks and lighters where small kids can get at them, of course. Do you have any old-style wood matches-the kind that don't require a separate sandpaper safety-match striking pad? (They are still sold in giant lengths as fireplace starters.) Best advice is to dispose of them. Otherwise, keep them in a closed container or mice may nibble them into ignition.

Cooking fires resulting from an overheated skillet, splashing oil on the stove top, or from spilled grease catching in the oven are usually controllable with a box of common baking soda if you catch the fire early. Keep a big box of soda handy to throw on a blaze, and use the A/B/C extinguisher if the soda doesn't work. Never throw water on a cooking fire; the superheated oil will turn the water to instant steam, hurling blobs of burning oil on you and the surrounding area.

Chemical fires (including gasoline, kerosene, and heating oil) are easily prevented but can be fast spreading and hard to contain once started. Keep fuels, paints, battery acid, and such in tightly closed containers, and store in places where they can't be tipped over. Don't expose flammable volatiles to an ignition source, and don't allow interactive chemicals to mix (not even on cleaning rags). Don't use oil-based paint or any flammable solvents near an open flame or toss paint- or solvent soaked rags into a pile and invite spontaneous combustion. Air oily rags outdoors.

It is a good rule never to store paint, gasoline, or other flammable solvents inside the house or in a hay-filled barn. Old time farmers built an expendable fuel/paint shed some distance from major buildings. Do not use gasoline as a paint or grease solvent and, any time you use a flammable volatile, do it in a well-ventilated space and in the absence of open flame or a red-hot electric element (such as a soldering iron). If you still use tobacco, don't smoke in bed or anywhere else you might doze off and drop a lit cigarette.

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