Check Your Smoke Alarms.

Fire Departments have a devious scheme of propaganda which I am currently helping to perpetuate. When the time changes (hello folks, we're back on standard time) they want you to check you smoke alarms as well as resetting your clocks. On rare occassions like this, propaganda is a life saving good thing.

Also, in a fire department propaganda update, you all remember stop, drop and roll dick roll -- the procedure to take when you are on fire. We'll, it turns out that there is one more piece of that puzzle. If you are on fire, you should also put your hand over your face. This helps keep smoke and fire out of your lungs and eyes, and it is easier to reconstruct the skin on your hands than it is to reconstruct your face.

Other basic reminders: Feel doors to see if they are hot before you open them in a fire, and stay low as you escape a fire as smoke kills far more people than fire does. Also, you should have a planned meeting place for family members outside the house and you should formulate an escape plan in advance (the hardest part in a 1925 house whose windows and doors do not open easily to young children's hands).

Thanks to the Wash Park Fire Department at their annual pancake breakfast earlier this year for all of these handy fire safety tips.