To support your community education effort during Fire Prevention Week (October 5-11, 2003), interfire.org has created an interactive module to use with kids and adults to teach key fire prevention and fire safety concepts. This fire safety content in this presentation was prepared using free resources available at firepreventionweek.org. For more information on Fire Prevention Week and free resources for firefighters, teachers, and families, visit firepreventionweek.org.

The module uses the interFIRE VR house fire in a new way. Instead of investigating the fire scene, you are going to walk through the house with your audience, explaining key fire prevention and safety concepts as you go. This printed document is the speaker notes for the presentation. When you click on each hotspot (as explained below), the hotspot is supported with bullet points.

The interFIRE VR "fire safety house" can also be experienced without using the following speaker's notes. Simply click on the hotspots for important fire safety information.

BEFORE YOU START

	When your cursor is “at rest” (no mouse button pressed) over the VR scene, it looks like a target.
	On the main screen, place your mouse over the VR scene. Hold down the left mouse button and move the mouse from side to side and up and down (the cursor will change to a thin arrow). This will turn around the VR scene and tilt it up and down. You will move in the direction the arrow points.
	You may zoom in or out for a closer look within the VR scene. To zoom in, use the SHIFT key on your keyboard. To zoom out, use the CTRL key. You may zoom in or out while moving or while stationary.
	When you want to examine an object in the VR, let go of the mouse button and slide the mouse around the object. When you see your cursor change to a hand, you can click there for details about that hotspot.
	When you want to move to another location in the VR scene, for example from the kitchen to the dining room, use Step 1 to position the VR facing the way you want to go. Then, release the mouse button. Move your mouse around the picture. When you see your cursor change to a thick arrow, click there to move to that location in the VR scene.

Practice these controls until you are familiar with how to move around the VR scene. Review the following content and you are ready to teach the module.

INTRODUCTION

In an age-appropriate manner, introduce your audience to the interFIRE VR house. Explain that this was a real house, created to train firefighters and fire investigators, and that a real, controlled fire was set in this home. You are going to go through it with them to help them understand fire prevention and fire safety. Along the way, you’ll be asking questions and helping them understand how they could have gotten out of this house if they had been inside when the fire started. First, you’ll talk about fire prevention.

SMOKE ALARMS

ADDITIONAL MATERIALS: a real smoke alarm, if possible.

NAVIGATION:
Start your talk with a discussion of the importance of smoke alarms. Navigate the VR to the basement of the home (walk into the front door, through the living room, in the dining room make a left into the hallway, then click on the staircase leading downstairs). On the ceiling to the right of the stairwell, you will see a round object. This is a smoke alarm. Ask your audience if they can guess what it is. When they do, click on the smoke alarm to bring up the screen of supporting text.

DISCUSSION:
Discuss the following with your audience:

• Why is the smoke alarm on the ceiling? Smoke alarms should always be placed high up on walls or on the highest part of the ceiling because smoke rises. There should also be a smoke alarm on every floor, including near every bedroom area.
• Smoke alarms have to be tested! Once a month is recommended. If you have a real smoke alarm to show your audience, demonstrate how it is tested, but caution them to test their own using the manufacturer’s directions.
• Batteries have to be replaced once a year, or as soon as the smoke alarm chirps. Try to link this battery change to a special day of the year, like your birthday or daylight savings time change.
• Don’t ever take the battery out of the smoke alarm unless you are replacing it! If the alarm is going off when there isn’t a fire, clean it and/or replace it.
• Make sure everyone in the house knows what the smoke alarm sounds like.
• Never paint or decorate a smoke alarm because it may interfere with it.

If appropriate, inform the audience that having smoke alarms in your home reduces their chance of dying in a fire in half. Furthermore, one-half of home fire deaths occur in the 6% of homes with no smoke alarms

FIRE ESCAPE PLANNING

ADDITIONAL MATERIALS: A floor plan of the interFIRE home, either prepared in advance or drawn during the presentation.

NAVIGATION, PART 1:
Go back up the basement steps, turn right, go through the dining room and into the living room. Click on the bay window and cover the following important steps of fire escape planning.

DISCUSSION, PART 1:
First, explain the importance of fire escape planning:

• Inform the audience that the fire in this house burned for only five minutes. Yet, it did a lot of damage and could have killed anyone inside because of smoke inhalation (toxic chemicals from the fire’s smoke can get into your lungs and choke you). You may have as little as two minutes to escape safely from a fire in your home. The more you know about the ways out of your house, the faster you can get out. For that, you need a plan.
• The first step in fire escape planning is to get everyone in the household together. Then, the family should walk through the home and inspect all possible exits and escape routes. Use the interFIRE VR home as an example. While talking to your audience, wander throughout the interFIRE VR house, explaining the layout of the home to them. Walk upstairs from the basement, show them the two bedrooms to the left on the first floor, the bathroom across the hall from the basement stairs, the dining room, the kitchen, the garage, back through the kitchen and dining room into the living room, then up the stairs to the upstairs bathroom, the bedroom on the right, and the storage room on the left. Ask the audience what escape locations (doors and windows) they see in each room. Draw a floor plan of the home with them, marking two ways out of each room, just like they would do in their own home. On the upper floors, when someone points out a window, discuss the importance of installing escape ladders on upper floors. The floor plan now shows them the escape route for each room in the home. Quiz the audience by moving to a room in the interFIRE VR house, then asking who knows how they would get out of this room. For fun, trigger their response by making the smoke alarm sound, or sounding a real smoke alarm ("You are in bed upstairs in this house and [BEEP BEEP BEEP] hear the smoke alarm. What do you do?")

NAVIGATION, PART 2:
Navigate to the front lawn of the house (out the living room door).

DISCUSSION, PART 2:

• Now, explain that you will need a family meeting place. In this house, perhaps it will be in the field across the street from the home (indicate this on the VR). Mark that location on your floor plan.
• While on the front lawn, ask the audience if they see a problem with the front of the house from a fire safety perspective. It is likely that no one will see what the issue is. Have the audience imagine they are a firefighter and they are racing to the report of a fire at this house and all they know is the address is 5 Canal Street. Would they know that this is the house? Possibly not, because the house number is written in script above the door and is not very visible from the street. Click on the number over the front door and discuss how every house should have a clearly visible number so emergency services can find the house.

Close this section by reminding the audience that they should practice the fire safety plan twice a year.

STAY LOW

Now, move the audience into a discussion of how this plan would be implemented in a real fire. In every room, you’ve marked at least two ways out. Which one do you choose? You must choose the escape route that is the safest, the one that leads away from the fire and has the least amount of smoke and heat.

NAVIGATION:
Go back up the front steps and into the living room. Pause and explain that this room would have been filled with smoke and heat. It would have been impossible to get out the front door or the front window, or use the stairs to come down from the upper floor. How bad was it? Click on the couch in the living room to show your audience a video of the actual fire.

DISCUSSION:
Show the video. As it plays, explain how the fire starts on the couch, but spreads quickly across the paneling and carpet. Emphasize how the air at the bottom stays freshest longest, and that’s why you must crawl out of a fire—to avoid the poisonous gases as long as you can.

Now that your audience knows what the fire was like, pull out the floor plan again. In each room, discuss which route out would have been the best. Which ones avoided the living room? Also bring up how you can detect where the fire is, such as hot doorknobs, or smoke coming under the door.

If anyone in your audience lives in a highr-rise apartment, explain that they must also be familiar with the building’s evacuation plan, they must never use the elevator in a fire, and if they can’t get out, they should call the fire department to report their exact location, close all the doors to their location, and seal up around the door and the air vents as best they can with duct tape or cloth. Open the windows, if possible, to get fresh air.

SPACE HEATERS

NAVIGATION:
Remain in the living room.

DISCUSSION:
Explain that during December, January, and February, heating equipment is the leading cause of home fires. Two-thirds of home heating fire deaths were caused by portable or fixed space heaters. Ask the audience if they see a space heater in this room. Point out how close the space heater is to the couch and that this is unsafe. Click on the space heater and emphasize the following points:

• Space heaters should be kept away from combustible materials like furniture, blankets, and curtains. Keep space heaters at least three feet from these materials.
• Space heaters should be turned off when no one is in the room.
• Only new space heaters equipped with high-temperature limit switches and tip switches should be used. These safety features ensure that the heater automatically shuts off if it gets too hot or if it is knocked over or falls over.
• Don’t use space heaters at night when people are asleep.

CRAWL PRACTICE

NAVIGATION:
Navigate to the dining room and face the kitchen door.

DISCUSSION:
Point out the smoke line of demarcation on the wall. It is a very clear illustration of where the poisonous gases are and where they are not. Click on the wall and emphasize the following points:

• Stay low where the “good” air is and crawl out. If you have children in the audience, have them practice crawling on their hands and knees, like a cat.
• Do not crawl on your belly; stay on hands and knees. If you have kids in the audience, explain that they must be a cat and not a snake (no crawling on their bellies), because sometimes there are poisonous gases right at the floor level that they need to stay above

CLOSE THE DOORS!

NAVIGATION:
Go through the living room and up the stairs. Stand in the hallway and show the audience the bathroom and the bedroom on the right. Then, enter each room, showing the stark difference in damage. The bathroom is nearly destroyed, the bedroom is almost untouched.

DISCUSSION:
Ask the audience if they can guess why the hallway and bathroom are so damaged by smoke and heat, but the bedroom isn’t. The answer is: the bedroom door was closed and the bathroom door was not. Click on the bed and emphasize the following points:

• Closed doors keep out smoke and fire for longer periods of time.
• Sleep with your bedroom door closed.
• If you have to get out of a fire, close the doors behind you as you go out your escape route. This will slow the spread of the fire.
• If you are in a fire and can’t get out, such as if you are in a high-rise apartment and can’t get to the hallway, close all the doors between you and the fire and plug up the door cracks an d air vents with duct tape, towels, or clothes. Make sure to call the fire department and tell them where you are. Stay by the window and wave a colored cloth to signal the firefighters. If you can, open the windows to get fresh air. If smoke comes in the windows, close them. Do not break the windows. Remember, this is a last resort. You must try to get out using your escape plan first!

STOP, DROP , ROLL – COOL and CALL

Now, move your audience into a discussion of the possibility that, some day, their clothes or person could catch on fire. Do they know how to prevent this? If it does happen, do they know what to do?

NAVIGATION:
Walk down the stairs, through the living room and into the dining room. Make a right into the kitchen.

DISCUSSION:
Challenge the audience to identify four things in this room that get very hot. The answers are the stovetop, the oven, the toaster (stainless steel, to the right of the sink), and the microwave (black, to the right of the toaster). If appropriate, tell the audience that more fires start in the kitchen than in any other place in the home and cooking fires are the #1 cause of home fires and home fire injuries. Explain to children that it is very important that they never cook unless there is an adult supervising them, that no one should ever leaving cooking food unattended, and that people should not get too close to open flames, because their clothes might catch fire.

Click on the stove and emphasize what to do if they ever do catch fire:

• STOP right where they are.
• DROP to the ground.
• Cover their faces with their hands and ROLL back and forth to put out the flames. They should keep rolling until the flames are out.
• COOL the burned areas with water.
• CALL for help.

If you can, demonstrate this procedure to the audience, then have them practice.

Also emphasize how to prevent kitchen fires:

• Only cook with an adult.
• Never leave cooking food unattended.
• Keep pot handles turned in.
• Don’t play in the kitchen.
• Don’t wear loose clothes when cooking.
• Keep flammable items like towels, papers, and potholders off the stove.
• Unplug electrical appliances when they are not being used.
• Never play with matches, lighters, the stove, or any open flame.
• Don’t light candles without an adult present. Don't leave candles unattended and don't sleep with them lit.

SMOKING

NAVIGATION:
In the kitchen, click on the garbage can near the door to the driveway.

DISCUSSION:
Explain that smoking materials are the leading cause of fire deaths in the United States. Most of the fires caused by smoking materials happen because they are not properly disposed of. If someone in your house smokes, they should put water on any matches, butts and ashes before throwing them away. And, you should make sure that ash trays are heavy enough so the do not tip over easily.

CONCLUSION
Return to the living room and ask your audience what they’ve learned today. The most important points of this exercise are:

• Install smoke alarms at the ceiling level on every floor and near every bedroom.
• Keep batteries in smoke alarms and test them monthly. Replace batteries once a year or as soon as the alarm chirps.
• Create a fire escape plan for your home with two ways out of every room. Practice the plan twice a month. Have a meeting place for the family to meet at after getting out of the home.
• Make sure your house has a clear number on the front.
• Install escape ladders on upper floor windows.
• When you hear the fire alarm or smell smoke, get low and crawl out using the best escape route: the shortest one that avoids the fire. Don’t crawl on your belly; stay on your hands and knees.
• Keep doors closed. When escaping, close the doors behind you as you go out your escape route.
• Operate space heaters safely. Keep them away from combustibles, turn them off when no one is in the room and when you go to sleep, and use only newer space heaters.
• If your clothes catch on fire, STOP, DROP, ROLL – COOL and CALL.
• Prevent cooking fires. Only cook with an adult, never leave cooking food unattended, stay away from open flames, and don’t use candles without an adult present.
• If someone in your home smokes, make sure that all smoking materials are extinguished and doused with water before being thrown away.

Encourage your audience to implement all these prevention and safety tips as soon as possible. They may save their lives.