How much time do you have to get out of your home should a fire occur ? Maybe a lot less than you think.

The amount of time you have to escape a house fire has greatly decreased in the past few decades:

30 years ago you had about 15 to 17 minutes to escape a house fire.

Today, you have about 3 to 5 minutes to escape a house fire.

 The reason the time to escape a home fire has decreased so much relates to changes in the types of furniture and other contents in today’s homes, including more plastics and petroleum based products. Changes in how homes are designed (open floor plans, larger rooms and higher ceilings) have also changed the chemical composition of the fire and greatly increased the speed at which it grows.

Most homeowners have a false sense of security

With so many homes now having smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors, homeowners have been lulled into a false sense of security.

Safety surveys by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) have found that the majority of American homeowners feel that they are most secure from a fire when they are in their own home. However, approximately 80% of all fires occur in private residences, not at work or other places, so home fires actually present the greatest threat to their life. We seem to forget that home fires annually cause approximately:

• 2,510 civilian fire deaths, or 93% of all civilian structure fire deaths,
• 12,300 civilian fire injuries, or 87% of all civilian structure fire injuries, and
• $6.7 billion in direct damage, or 68% of total direct damage in structure fires.

Fires kill more people each year than all other natural disasters combined, including floods, hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes.

What government agencies such as FEMA want you to know

Fire is FAST. In less than 30 seconds a small flame can turn into a major fire. It only takes minutes for thick black smoke to fill a house or for the home to be engulfed in flames.

Fire is HOT. The heat is more threatening than the flames. Room temperatures in a fire can be 100 degrees at floor level and rise to 600 degrees at eye level. Inhaling this super hot air will scorch your lungs and melt clothes to your skin.

Fire is DARK. Fire starts bright, but quickly produces black smoke and complete darkness.

Fire is DEADLY. Believe it or not, smoke and toxic gases kill more people than flames do. Fire produces poisonous gases that make you disoriented and drowsy. Asphyxiation is the leading cause of fire deaths, exceeding burns by a three-to-one ratio.

Why has the time to escape a home fire dropped to just a few minutes? 

The changes in a home’s content, types of materials and design, helps to explain why modern home fires may burn up to 8 times faster and can produce upwards of 200% more smoke than house fires did 30 years ago.

Additionally, homes today with modern products produce not only more heat, but also generate more smoke. This deadly smoke is filled with poisonous gases containing carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, unburned hydrocarbons and cyanide.

The contents of homes today burn faster and hotter

Builders now use a lot of products with petroleum bases such as plastics and synthetics. Even the wood trim in homes these days is not real wood, but is often MDF (medium-density fiberboard) containing glues and hazardous substances like urea-formaldehyde. Kids have more plastic toys, the kitchen has more plastic containers rather than glass as well as the plastic coffee makers and microwaves with a plastic body.

Furniture, cabinets and flooring often have plastic or paper laminates over a modified or composition wood base as well as flammable glues holding everything together. All of these factors lead to more destructive home fires.

Bedding, pillows and sofas usually contain petroleum based products and chemical synthetics which burn much faster than the materials and products used in older homes. Interestingly, fires that start on or in upholstered furniture only account for 1 to 3 percent of home fires but cause 15 to 20 percent of fire deaths.

The modern products used in homes today produce not only more heat, but also produce more smoke and poisonous gases such as carbon monoxide and cyanide; these products supply the fuel required for everything in a room to spontaneously burst into flames

The design and construction materials used in today’s homes also cause them to burn faster and hotter than homes 30 years ago

Fire experts claim that two important factors that help determine how deadly or destructive a fire will be involves containment and oxygen.

Containment

Containment deals with compartmentalizing the fire or containing it to a small area. If a fire occurs in a small area (compartment) like just one room and it doesn’t get to spread or build-up to a large fire, then there is less chance for damage and death.

Open floor plans and higher ceilings

Older homes tend to have more smaller rooms and these rooms often had doors. Builders now build houses with more open space because modern day families want this. Open floor plans with kitchens being open to family rooms, often no dining rooms, and large rooms are more in demand. Ceiling heights are often 9, 10 or 12 feet high.

Larger homes = more fuel

Homes today are larger than older homes. The larger the home the more fuel (furniture, clothes, wood studs, etc.) for a fire to consume.

These modern trends create less compartments (areas to contain a fire in) and greater spaces which allows a fire to grow rapidly and provides more oxygen for combustion.

More two stories homes

Land cost for building a home is very expensive today, so builders build more two-story homes than they did years ago. With a two-story home you need less land and there is less curb and gutter footage that a builder has to pay for.