Close Before You Doze: How closing your door could save your life.

Close before you doze is a nationwide campaign that is aiming to make people aware of the difference that closing your door at night when you go to bed could have on your survival if you have a house fire. Forty years ago if your house was on fire residents had about 17 minutes to escape. Due to the increase of synthetic materials in our furniture and even construction materials experts estimate we have more like 3 minutes to get out of the house today. One simple step, closing your bedroom door can help to slow the spread of flames and reduces the amount of carbon monoxide entering the room by almost 99%. In case of a fire having a closed bedroom door does 3 things for you that having an open door doesn’t.

1.Keeps the air in your room cleaner and less smoky, allowing you to breath easier, longer.

2.Keeps the temperature in your room down to a survivable temperature. The FSRI did a controlled fire to monitor what happened in both situations. After 10 minutes the temperature in the room with the closed door got up to 100, at the same time the open door room reached 500 degrees.

3. The closed door acts like a shield and will keep the fire out of your room for a few extra minutes, giving you a few extra minutes to come up with a plan to get out.

When it comes to fire safety make sure you always have working batteries in your smoke/carbon monoxide detectors, check them every month and replace the detectors after 10 years. Have a safety plan in place for in case there is a fire and make sure everyone knows what it is. For more information on the close before you dose campaign and to see a video about how quickly a fire can spread check out closeyourdoor.com