By teaching your children fire safety you can make sure they know what to do when a house fire occurs. Making sure that your children know exactly what is required of them cuts down on the chaos of the emergency situation and helps keep your family safe and secure.

All children should know about important fire safety procedures such as the need to stay low to the ground in a smoky room and the need to stop, drop, and roll if their clothes should catch fire. Staying low to the ground keeps you from inhaling smoke, as smoke always rises towards the ceiling. Smoke inhalation can lead to unconsciousness, and is a big component of deaths caused by house fires. Tell your family members that they can put a damp rag or a piece of clothing over their faces and breathe in through it in order to cut down on the effects of smoke inhalation even more. However, you generally shouldn't waste time finding a damp rag in an emergency; it's also dangerous to use a faucet to wet a damp rag depending on the severity of the fire, as if the water pipes in your home are exposed to high temperatures the water traveling through them may be converted to steam which will blast out of the faucet and cause burns.

Make sure your children know how to correctly stop, drop, and roll and feel confident in the fact that it works. It smothers the fire and deprives it of oxygen, which puts out the flames. The usual response to clothing catching on fire is to run around and flail about wildly, which only exposes the fire to more oxygen and feeds the flames. Your children should also know to touch door handles before opening the door to see if they are hot. If they are, it means that there's a fire in the next room, and they should leave the door closed and find another route out of the house.

Make sure your children understand that they should never play with lighters or matches. Fires started by playing with these things are the leading cause of fire-related injuries in children under five years old. Many children are fascinated by lighters and matches and want to experiment with lighting things on fire to see what happens. Hide lighters and matches in your home and keep them out of the reach of your children in order to cut down on the temptation. Make sure all flammable liquids such as gasoline and lighter fluid are securely stored out of the reach of your kids.

Do regular fire drills to practice your evacuation plan so that your family knows what to do in an emergency. Make sure everyone knows all the possible exit points of the house that they can use; a fire in your home will be a chaotic situation, and it's best to make sure all members of your family know your evacuation plan well enough so that it is second nature and they don't have to waste time thinking if a fire starts. Quick, determined response to a fire will save your family members' lives.