Free tool · Scarlet Beast

When there’s a fire at home

For anyone with a fire or a sounding smoke alarm right now, anyone who has just had a fire, and anyone who wants to be ready before one. Getting out. What to do if you can’t. Clothes on fire, burns and smoke. A pan fire, an oven fire, and when an extinguisher makes sense. After the fire. Smoke alarms: where, which, testing, and what the chirp means. An escape plan and a drill. Apartments, high-rises and renting. Children, older people, disability, and people who are deaf or hard of hearing. Stopping a fire before it starts. Where the sources differ. And the words to say when you call. No quiz and no score. One thing at a time.

This page and its wording were written with AI (Claude) for Scarlet Beast (our AI policy). The facts come from pages read on October 3, 2026: the National Fire Protection Association (Home fire escape planning; Smoke alarms, with its questions and answers; Installing and maintaining smoke alarms; Safety with cooking equipment; Fire extinguishers; Safety with heating equipment; Safety with candles; Electrical safety in the home; Fire Prevention Week); the U.S. Fire Administration (Smoke Alarms; Home Fire Escape Plans; Cooking, Heating, Appliance and Electrical, Battery and Smoking Fire Safety; Choosing and Using Fire Extinguishers; Fire Safety for Children, for Older Adults, for People with Disabilities, and Hoarding and Fire Safety; Helping Community Residents After a Home Fire), whose pages are written for fire departments to share with residents; Ready.gov (Home Fires); the American Academy of Pediatrics on HealthyChildren.org (Fire Safety: Protecting Your Family from a Home Fire); the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (Fire Safety); MedlinePlus, from the U.S. National Library of Medicine (the summaries of Fire Safety and Inhalation Injuries, not its encyclopedia); and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (Disaster Distress Helpline). The descriptions of the 988 Lifeline and Crisis Text Line are the ones on our other pages, from their own front pages. Some pages could not be read: the American Red Cross site refused our request, and two National Fire Protection Association addresses and one from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were not found, so none of them is used. We did not read the tip sheets, handouts and booklets that are PDF files (including the U.S. Fire Administration’s “After the Fire” booklet and its high-rise sheet), any state’s or city’s law on smoke alarms or on rented homes, any page on insurance claims, on wildfires, on fires at work, on sprinklers, or on treatment in a hospital; where the page touches one of these, it says so. We did not call any number. Where two sources say different things, the page reports each: how to test a door, how long you have, where smoke alarms go, how often to change batteries and clean alarms, where to keep an extinguisher and who should use one, and whether people in apartment buildings leave or stay behind a closed door. The page has no questionnaire and gives no score, on purpose. It quotes no named person, and it gives no figures for how many fires there are or how many people are hurt in them; the sources have them, with their context. The distances, times and the one price on the page are the sources’ own. Lines marked “Ours” are our own suggestions. English only for now. This page saves nothing: no account, no cookies, nothing you tick is stored or sent, and no analytics (privacy). Scarlet Beast is not a fire department, a clinic or an insurer, and takes no money from anyone named here. Found a mistake? Email [email protected].