Ready Kids › Home Alone Ready › Badge 5 › Lesson 5.3
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Getting out
Get out of the house by the planned way, low under smoke, without going back for anything.
1Watch
The hallway
The hallway
Smoke along the ceiling of an upstairs landing. A kid inside a bedroom, door shut, raises the back of her hand towards the door. The film stops an inch from the wood.
15 secondsWhat her hand tells her in the next second decides which way she goes.
2The idea
The seven-second version
Touch the door. Hot door, use the other way. Low, under the smoke, and moving. Out. Stay out. Call from outside. That is all of it.
Touch the door with the back of your hand, high up. If the door or the handle is hot, do not open it. The handle heats up first, which is why you check with skin you can pull back quickly. Cool door: open it slowly, ready to shut it again if smoke comes in.
3The idea
Low, under the smoke, and moving
Smoke rises and fills a room from the top down. The air near the floor stays clearest longest. Hands and knees, and go. Low and moving, not low and waiting.
Hot door, or smoke too thick to go through: shut the door. Put something along the bottom of it. Go to the window. Downstairs, if your plan says the window is a way out, out you go. Upstairs, the window is for being seen and heard: open it, shout, wave something bright. Call 911 and say exactly which room you are in.
4The idea
Never go back
Not for a phone. Not for a pet. Not for a brother you think is still in there. You tell the firefighters where they are, the second they arrive, and they go. They have the kit. You have a T-shirt.
Jade gets out and remembers the cat. She stays at the meeting place and tells the first firefighter: cat, upstairs, back bedroom. Going back in is the thing that turns one emergency into two. The people whose job it is are on their way.
5Try it
The branching escape
Out of the house
A house with smoke in it. At each door you choose: touch it or open it, go low or stand, out or back for something. A wrong turn plays what happens next, then returns you to the choice.
The go-back-for-the-phone branch is short. Take it once so you know why it is short.
6Decide
Upstairs bedroom. You touch the door with the back of your hand. It is hot.
Pick one to carry on.
7Say it
Where you are, for the street and for the operator
Shout it like you mean it
“I'm at the window, back bedroom, upstairs.”
Swap in your own room. The people outside need a room name, not a wave.
8Find them
You are out. Which of these do you do?
Tap the ones that count.
Find all 4.
9Do it
Before you leave this page
Crawl your escape route once, for real, hands and knees, from your bed to the front door. Touch the back of your hand to every door on the way.
Tick it when you have done it.
Lesson done.
Back of your hand on the door. Hot door, other way. Low and moving. Never go back.
Next lesson: Your plan, written down