Our 3-Step Escape Plan

  • First Escape Route
  • Second Escape Route
  • Meeting Place
Notes

Use this space to note any additional information about your escape plan, i.e. who will assist

Your checklist
  • Get low

    Smoke is poisonous and more deadly than flames.

    If you breathe smoke for more than a few breaths it can kill you.

  • Be fast

    A house fire can kill you in less than three minutes.

    Don't spend time trying to save possessions.

  • Close doors

    A closed door buys you time.

    It slows down the spread of fire, giving you more time to get to safety.

  • Get out - stay out!

    People have died by going back into a fire.

    Don't leave the meeting place to go back inside for any reason.

Fire & Emergency New Zealand

Keeping whānau safe, one postcard at a time

Keeping whānau safe, one postcard at a time

Community Risk teams in mid-South Canterbury and on the West Coast have found a great new way to make fire safety fun and memorable for local tamariki (children).  

After delivering the Get Firewise programmes to local schools, the Community Risk Team returned to take students through a special postcard activity.  

The children coloured in the Get Firewise-themed images and wrote out fire safety messages on the postcards. The back of the postcards also had information for whānau (family) about booking in a Home Fire Safety Visit.  

The children then took the postcards home to share.  

Community Risk Team member and school children with Get Firewise postcardsGet Firewise postcard - black and white smoke alarm

As the Get Firewise programmes have already been delivered to these two schools, the postcard activity was a practical and engaging way to keep up the kōrero (conversation) and continue students’ fire safety education.  

It was also ‘a simple and easily accessible way to help break down language and literacy barriers for whānau around the important topic of fire safety in the home’ says Tash Rankin, volunteer firefighter and former mid-South Canterbury Community Risk team member. 

‘I wanted to capture what the kids were taking away from our education session and get this information out of the classroom and into homes’.  

After the postcard was taken home, one whānau, for whom English is a second language, approached a Firefighter to tell them it prompted them to change their smoke alarm battery. Ka rawe! (Excellent!)