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You Have Less Than 4 Minutes To Get Out Of A Fire

You have to watch this video. It will make you rethink your strategy for escaping if your house catches on fire.
Credit: Underwriters Laboatories
The legacy room is filled with natural materials like wool and cotton and the modern room is filled with synthetics.

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GREENSBORO, NC -- If your smoke alarm was going off….do you know how much time you have to safely get out of your house? Is it five minutes? 10 minutes? The amount of time depends on the age of your home and what's in it.

Underwriters Laboratories set fires in two identical rooms -- except room one is filled with older furniture made with natural materials like wool and cotton. Room two is filled with modern furniture made with synthetics.

Then firefighters started a stopwatch.

At just over two minutes into the test, room one's fire is still tiny but room two has huge flames. Then at just 3:22, fire engineers say room two flashes over with fire. They say everything is burning at once and the room is so hot, it can't sustain life.

"I was standing very close to those fires when we did some of those research projects and I can tell you it was extreme heat," John Drengenberg, UL fire engineer.

John says room one doesn't not flash over until 29:16.

"When smoke alarms were first introduced in the 1970s and 80s - when the alarm went off, you had about on average 17 minutes to escape your home," says John.

And John says ... as you can see in the video...it's dropped to three or four minutes before you are in danger of dying in your home.

Here's why:

  • John says that synthetic material in our modern pillows and curtains and couches is basically frozen gasoline so fires burn faster and hotter.
  • Plus John said homes started getting bigger in the 90s - so there's more fuel for the fire.
  • And those big high ceilings and open floor plans we all love ... means fire can spread quickly

"There is no door, no partition between the kitchen and the family room and some homes that family room leads up to balcony which have the bedrooms off of them," says John.

John says this video really shows you should have two escape routes. And of course, John and every firefighter says we want at least one smoke detector on every floor.

The fire engineers at UL says it's not just us in greater danger in new homes. So are firefighters. Builders now use engineered lumber. It's stronger than real lumber...and less expensive but it burns a lot faster. The engineers say that increases the chance a floor could collapse under a firefighter.

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