Residential Fires on the Rise – Ways to Keep Your Family Safe and Lower Your Home Insurance Rates Too

The National Fire Protection Association just released final data on residential fires for 2006, and the total showed an increase of 4.2% over 2005.  The good news is that deaths due to fires were down 11.7%, just 3245 in 1.6 million fires, which is the lowest amount since the NFPA began recording totals in 1977. The scary part is that the financial loss from these fires was $6.9 billion dollars – just one more reason for having home insurance.

Every 76 seconds a residential fire occurs somewhere in the US.   By doing everything you can to avoid becoming a statistic, you’ll not only protect your family, but you can lower your home insurance rates as well. 

The first thing to do is install working smoke detectors on each floor of your home, including the basement.  Make sure that you change the batteries every six months and test each regularly to confirm they are working properly. 

Keep a fire extinguisher in the kitchen.  In fact, it would be great to have one on each floor, and make sure that each member of the family knows how to use it.  We actually received a fire extinguisher as a wedding shower gift along with a card that our friend wanted to make sure we were always safe.  I thought that was a terrific idea.

Develop a fire escape plan so that each family member knows how to get outside the house quickly in case of emergency.  If you have a multi-story home, determine a way for those with bedrooms upstairs to escape in case the stairway is blocked.  Place stickers on the window identifying each bedroom and the number of children inside.  In fact you can even get stickers announcing pets in the family too.

When you apply for homeowners insurance, each insurance company will ask whether you have smoke detectors and a fire extinguisher, and give you a discount for doing so.  They’ll also ask how far your home is from the nearest fire hydrant and fire station.  By the way, these are just a few ideas for saving money on home insurance.

The most expensive, but safest way to protect your home is having a monitored service, which ties into your alarm system and notifies the fire department if an alarm goes off.  Unfortunately some home insurance companies do not offer much of a discount for this type of service, but make sure to ask about it anyway as you obtain home insurance quotes.