Fire Preparedness Poll Results - And A Flickr Challenge! -

The results are in! Looks like most of our blog readers (78%) are doing well in the “knows how to use an extinguisher” and “has an evacuation plan” categories. But only half said they had:

Recently checked the smoke alarm battery. (To be fair, most of us have 10-year lithium batteries in ours, so we wouldn’t have checked-marked that box.)

Made sure they had a fire extinguisher in a handy, visible place.

Planned/Discussed their families’ (or roommates’, as the case may be) meet up spot for post-evacuation.

I’m just sayin’…knowing how to use an extinguisher isn’t going to do a whole lot of good if you don’t have one handy. And having an evacuation route is great, but you have to have a spot where you all plan to end up.

This was an anonymous poll, but I’m going to just share my own answers…sadly the only box I could check was “knows how to use an extinguisher.” Like I said, I just moved into my new place, so I’m getting to the next steps.

SO…I’m issuing a challenge to all of you (and to myself). Go get your fire extinguishers, map your meet-up spots, build your kits, check your batteries…AND send us photos of it! I’ve started a Flickr group called I’m Red Cross Ready. It’s a place for all of us to share photos of our preparedness progress. I hope to see lots of photos of your maps, extinguishers, meet-up spots, etc. Whatever you want to share, and feel free to be creative with it!