Welcome to Residential Fire Safety. Before we talk about prevention and escape, it helps to understand how a home fire actually behaves, because almost everything you will do later follows from one fact: you have far less time than you think.

By the end of this lesson you will be able to do three things: describe how quickly a home fire grows, explain why smoke is the real danger, and name the conditions a fire needs so you can recognize risk in your own home.

Here is the single most important idea in this class. Once a smoke alarm sounds, you may have as little as one to two minutes to get out safely. A fire that looks small can fill a home with deadly smoke before you finish reading this sentence aloud.

Most people picture flames as the danger. In reality, smoke and the toxic gases in it, especially carbon monoxide, cause most fire deaths. Smoke also blinds you and makes a familiar hallway impossible to navigate. That is why so much of our plan is about getting under the smoke and getting out.

A fire needs three things at once: fuel, heat, and oxygen. Remove any one and the fire cannot continue. This is the idea behind nearly every prevention and response step. Keep fuel away from heat, and starve a small fire of oxygen by closing a lid or a door.

Take a moment to think about your own home. Where is a fire most likely to start, and what is the first sign you would notice? Holding these in mind will make the next lessons concrete.