What can you do?
Supervise and educate your children:
- Don’t let your children use fire – helping with lighting the fire or burning off makes children think that they can control fire.
Teach match and lighter safety:
- Teach your children to tell you about any unattended matches or lighters they find and reward them for their honesty.
Make your home fire safe:
- Lead by example – reduce the risk of fire by using fire, cooking, heating and electricity safely
- Have working smoke alarms in all sleeping areas, living areas, garages, hallways and above stairways in multi-storey homes.
Make a home fire escape plan to get you and your children out alive:
- Everybody in the house should know what to do if there is a fire - have a family home fire escape plan and practice it at least twice a year.
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Lock away matches and lighters – just like you lock away medicines and other dangerous household substances. Educate children that lighters and matches are tools not toys.
Hot tips
- Crawl Low and Go, Go, Go! Smoke may harm or kill well before a fire.
- Teach your children to Cover Your Face and Stop, Drop, Rock and Roll in case their clothes catch fire.
- Make sure your children know what an alarm sounds like and what to do if it goes off. Sleeping children are unlikely to wake to an alarm unless it’s in their room and they have been taught what the sound of the alarm means.
- Supervise your children at all times, especially around fire, cooking and heating
- Teach your children to dial Triple Zero (000) in an emergency.