Close Before You Doze Campaign: 5 Ideas for Getting Your Family Involved

Have you heard of the “Close Before You Doze” campaign?

Last week, we posted about how a closed bedroom door saved the lives of two little girls in a local fire. Closed doors can help family members stay alive if they’re trapped in a bedroom.

Closing a bedroom door is what the “Close Before You Doze” campaign from the UL Firefighter Safety Research Institute (FSRI) is all about. Half of home fires occur during the night, so keeping the door closed when sleeping just makes sense. A closed door can also help reduce the growth of a fire and limit damage to your home.  

Here’s how to get your family onboard with this simple, but important, step.

Teach Importance

Demonstrating the importance of closing a bedroom door is key to convincing your family why they need to start doing this…tonight. Explain how the closed door help stop a fire from getting bigger and spreading to more rooms. Discuss how the closed door helps keep smoke and heat out of the room. Plus, the FSRI closed doors can help reduce the heat from a whopping 1,000 degrees to about 100 degree, a hot, but survivable temperature that could make all the difference. FSRI says closed doors also help keep carbon monoxide levels lower.

Teach the Steps

Closing the door as you go to sleep is the one thing. But if there is a fire, learning how to determine if you should open the door to try and lave is the next step. Teach family members to look for smoke or heat coming through the cracks in the door. If they see smoke, do not open the door. Next, touch the door to see if it’s hot. If not, gently try the doorknob. If the doorknob is hot, do not open the door.

Shut the Door Behind You

Also teach your family members to shut the door behind them when they do exit in a fire, as the closed door could help slow down the fire, resulting in less damage to your home.

Hang Door Hangars

The FSRI is providing free door hanger templates in Adobe PDF format you can download and print. The door hangars help remind your kids and other family members to close the bedroom door. The hangars are available in English and Spanish. Click here to download the hangars.  Consider getting your community involved by printing the hangers and passing them out to your neighbors.

Rehearse Fire Exit Plan

Shutting the bedroom door is just the start. You also need to create a plan and rehearse how to exit the house during a fire and where to meet after escaping so you know everyone is accounted for. For more information on making an exit plan, read our recent blog post, Creating a home emergency exit plan.