You vs. Fire Season: Who Wins?

This week, we’re lighting a fire under your safety habits. Jimmy and Megan break down how to protect your home from wildfires, what to do if you’re caught hiking when a fire breaks out, and why those fire extinguishers from big box stores might not save the day. 

From defensible space and dryer lint hazards to why goats might be your best landscaping crew, we’ve got practical tips for fire season readiness. Plus, Jimmy shares why commercial-grade extinguishers are worth the upgrade, and how to safely store them in your home. 

Whether you’re a suburban homeowner or a weekend adventurer, this episode will help you outsmart the flames. 

Life Safety Associates specializes in emergency response training for corporate ERT Teams. We help businesses create competent and confident first responders who are ready to handle unexpected emergencies. For more information you find us @lifesafetyassoc or email@lifesafety.com.

Chapters

• 0:46 Introduction to Fire Safety
• 1:48 Home Fire Safety and Defensible Space
• 4:36 Fire Safety While Driving and Hiking
• 8:15 Evacuation Tips During Wildfires
• 9:53 Fire Extinguishers: Selection and Placement
• 15:01 Episode Closing

Transcript

Jimmy: 0:23

What's happening? It's Jimmy with your Girl Megs and their Life and Safety Podcast. What's happening?

Megan : 0:31

Hello.

Jimmy: 0:32

How you doing.

Megan : 0:33

I'm good. How are you?

Jimmy: 0:34

I'm doing all right, it's been a day, but we're here. We're doing some podcasting. We'll see what happens.

Megan : 0:41

Today's topic is fire safety. Why are we doing fire safety, Jimmy?

Jimmy: 0:45

Well, it's a good segue. It's like we've done this before.

Megan : 0:48

It's almost like we practiced Right.

Jimmy: 0:50

It's almost like we've been doing this for a whole year now.

Megan : 0:52

Crazy.

Jimmy: 0:56

Yeah, it's fire safety. We're doing that because it's May and fire season's right around the corner, so I just wanted to kind of go back over and talk about some you know, fire stuff. A lot of people are going to start going out and going camping and just enjoying the outdoors and stuff again. So let's kind of talk about fire safety stuff a little bit and just kind of refresh everybody's memories. So, with that being said, let's talk about at home. Let's talk about at home.

Jimmy: 1:26

If you live in a wooded or even partially wooded area or you live close to an outdoor space, you always want to kind of make sure we got to keep your fuel load down.

Jimmy: 1:40

So what I mean by fuel load is, you know, if you're one of the people that has a fireplace and you have lots of, you know, dry wood next to your house probably not the safest thing to store because of the wildfire that you know can ignite um, making sure that if you have old, like shake shingles like that's not really much anymore, that's not what's happening anymore, but just like the old wooden shingles like maybe it's a shed or something like that maybe you need to start thinking about cleaning those off or maybe getting rid of them. Um, some of the attic vents. Make sure the vents have like a cover that goes down. It's not just open up to the air, to the side, uh, or there's a fire, and actually make it like a great. It looks like a very fine, I don't know. That's where they get like a dirt shifter. If you will like particulate metal mesh to, you can put behind that so hot embers don't go through your attics and if you are out in the wilderness, more secluded land or more bigger property.

Jimmy: 2:47

Make sure you have your defensible space at least 30 feet in all directions.

Megan : 2:54

At least 30 feet of what.

Jimmy: 2:56

Clear, clean. You know debris basically. So a lawn, or if you're like, maybe you live in the country a little bit and maybe you have a swimming pool and then you have like a fence, but then, like, their property is just open, that property that's open, maybe you need to till it or get goats you can rent, you know, goats, it's a big fire fishing thing. They'll eat everything. Stink, but they eat everything. So you can knock down all the fuel load if you will, the grass, things like that dead leaves and things like that.

Jimmy: 3:33

I'm sure also for sure for sure.

Megan : 3:37

Another one that I saw online. You could say, tell me if this is true or not. But I said it's really important to clean out your dryer vent, because a lot of people don't clean those out often enough, and then that's a place where fires start, because the lint and dust gets trapped up in there and it's yeah as we know, lint and dust is a great fire starter if you're camping absolutely, and just cleaning the vent in the dryer.

Jimmy: 4:02

when you pull that out, there's actually, if you look down inside there, there where the lint trap is that usually gets caught up inside the actual dryer itself, not the actual duct. I mean both. But people usually clean the duct but they don't clean the actual dryer. So when you pull the lint trap out, it's not a bad idea to stick your vacuum cleaner down there.

Jimmy: 4:24

If you have like a shop vac or something like that. What dry vac? Stick that down in there or blow it out. Some people you know it's a little easier maybe to like to blow use air compressor or something like that. That's a great one. Good fire safety tip. Now let's kind of take it back out on the driving. Just don't throw things outside the car. You know, a big thing that people always say is like you know, cigarettes start, that Cigarettes actually don't start a lot of car-sized fires, a lot of it's trash glass, things like that.

Jimmy: 5:06

Uh, a lot of it's cadillac converters blowing up and shooting out the little honeycombs that work inside of it. Um, usually people starting it for just pulling over starting it, so that's a big one. Um, so I mean, don't throw your butts out of your car, anyways your cigarette butts, because it's gross. Yeah, um, don't throw your butts out of your car anyways, your cigarette butts, because it's gross yeah.

Jimmy: 5:27

Um, but really don't do it in the fire service. I mean, it's not going to start a fire. Usually I'm not saying it can't. It's just not always the cause and people like to say that's always the cause on roadside sports. It's not. Um, if you're hiking or outside and a fire, fire breaks out and somebody tells you to evacuate, make sure you do so and we'll talk about. You know what to do when you evacuate. I think we have a podcast coming up about that. You know what to take with you.

Jimmy: 6:08

And we'll talk more about that in that podcast, but just high level stuff. If you are evacuating any important documents, you might have birth certificates, marriage certificates, passports, some cash. If you can afford to stash that a little bit bank any banking information, any household information, any insurance information all that stuff's gonna to be super helpful, and make sure you put that in a nice safe area. Hiking, though when you're out hiking, carry a mask with you.

Jimmy: 6:35

Like a little N95, you know you probably have one left over from COVID maybe. I mean, obviously they're everywhere still Pick one up a cheap, cheap one, put that in your backpack so when there is smoke and things like that and ash, you can protect yourself while you're evacuating, and that's just probably a good idea in general. So that's a good one. Uh, I got asked the other day what happens if you're trap hiking. Um, try to get obviously obviously near water. Green stuff doesn't burn as much. The absolute worst case scenario you had to take shelter, obviously in the water probably would be better. You have to hold your breath while the fire goes over you. So think about that.

Jimmy: 7:22

Remember fire travels uphill, especially in ravines. So narrow canyons, things like that, It'll act like chimneys and it's gonna suck the fire up. Also, be dependent on the wind. Go opposite of the way the wind's blowing and try to run across the mountain face, Okay, so you run down the hill. Fire doesn't move fast down the hill unless you're in Santa Ana winds, that's not the season for that. Um, fire usually goes up the hill. So across the hill and then down the hill and you're almost always safer, even though it's hot on your feet in the burned areas or run to the black so just a couple quick things to remind yourself about some fire danger stuff, especially because fire season is starting.

Jimmy: 8:12

In your car, drive away as fast as you can. If you get trapped in your car most cars now are going to hold in the heat and things like that you'll probably have to run Probably. Can't take shelter in your car, okay, unless you have a fire blanket and things like that, but most people don't carry fire blankets in the car. So just probably run away, kind of avoid that stuff Go ahead.

Megan : 8:41

If you have a fire blanket in your car, how would that help?

Jimmy: 8:44

You would put it in the windows and that would reflect some of the heat away and it'll kind of keep you cooler in the car. It'll kind of burn you over. Yeah, Fire burns around you Again, last-ditch effort.

Megan : 9:01

I'm not saying you can ride it out.

Jimmy: 9:04

But if there's absolutely positively no way for you to drive away the fire's moving too fast, you're trapped. Something like that, something you could do, you know, versus if you're running it might provide you some protection might provide you some protection um, trying to think what else?

Megan : 9:30

let's talk about at home fire extinguishers yeah, some fire safety at home.

Jimmy: 9:35

Make sure you don't leave, um, you know, obviously, basic stuff. Keep your range, your cooking range, turn it off when you're out in use. Try not to keep anything you know hot on top of it, like grease, things like that. I mean, take the grease, move it off of the burner, let it cool off. Get ideas like that, vent on, get it above the thing, smooth the air around, clean your ovens, that's a big one, oh yeah.

Jimmy: 10:04

No one would want greasy, sticky ovens. Same with barbecue pits Clean your pit. You don't want the drippings and everything else to catch on fire. Yeah, that's always a bad thing, especially after, like I like to smoke. I have a pallet smoker and if I do a really long smoke, like if I smoked a brisket or maybe like a pork butt or something like that, I can't always catch the drippings.

Jimmy: 10:35

So it gets on the grease trap and sometimes it'll caramelize. Sometimes it, you know, gets a little touchy. It's a little touchy, it says it might stop, but I try to clean that thing pretty regularly. It's quite a chore but I like doing it. I like doing it. Um, now, fire extinguishers at home always a good idea to have one. Uh, I recommend people going out and buying commercial grade ones. And you know, you go to anybody abc fire, ace fire and like that, and they'll sell you a commercial grade one that just has to be inspected once a year. And you know, as long as it's inspected every year, they kind of guarantee that it's going to work. It's never a guarantee it's going to work, but at least it's a higher chance. If you go to a box store and you buy some of those off the shelf, they're only good for a couple years and they don't usually have boron dates.

Jimmy: 11:27

So if one says it's good for three years. You don't know how long it sat on the shelves and the warehouse, things like that then, you put it in your underneath your sink in your kitchen and it sits there for two years. You know a lot. Odds are it's probably not going to work.

Jimmy: 11:43

It's probably three or four or five years old yeah yeah, um, so if you have one and it might work, they work great for, uh, fertilizing your lawn because they have a loamy in them and then just turn your sprinklers on, okay, and that will keep the dust down. Don't do it when it's windy or if you're near your car or anybody else's car, because it's a fine grit and if you try to rub it off it'll scratch your car.

Megan : 12:10

Oh interesting, so don't do that.

Jimmy: 12:14

But you know, if you have like a lawn again front yard, backyard, shoot it, hose it off and it's great fertilizer and that way you get like the practice of it.

Megan : 12:23

Um, yeah, the first time that I used a fire extinguisher was actually here in one of the classes. Um, and I don't like I had seen movies of it and seen other people do it, but I'd never done it myself and it was. It's not a hard task to do, but it's like I felt a lot more confident after having done it actually in my hands once and I think that it's a it's a good thing to practice if you can it is okay, so best places to?

Megan : 12:54

if you um get fire extinguishers, so best case is to get a commercial grade one, not from box store. But where's the best places to keep them?

Jimmy: 13:03

great question. I would keep one underneath the sink in the kitchen, one in the garage, if you have one, and then one either in a hall, closet, upstairs or maybe your master bedroom, right? So I have one in our master bedroom in the closet. So if I have to, if the firearm goes off in the kitchen and I wake up and I it's clear enough for me to go there, we're still like, until they, you know, help extinguish or fight that fire, I do that mmm versus.

Jimmy: 13:33

You know, in the garage highlights, they're gonna find me the fire. You know lots of different chemicals, things there and underneath the sink, obviously, the cooking yeah so those are the three spots I guess, for maybe if it's upstairs- I'll pause it like that, like I said.

Jimmy: 13:49

So those are some spots I think about. Again, I recommend a commercial extinguisher. It's fire. We work a lot with those guys. They're good folks, good family-run business, so recommend them. Once you use a fire extinguisher it's not reusable, even if you only shoot it halfway. And that little dial inside of it needs to be in the green and the little vertical white part that says good. It has to be there to be good. If you have one at home, pull it out, turn it upside down, shake it. You'll hear the powder plump and then look at the dial and see if it's moved or not.

Megan : 14:32

Oh, that's a good thing to know.

Jimmy: 14:34

And sometimes it'll move like shooting it upside down. Sometimes it won't move, so they give it a little flick, you know, just kind of tap with your finger and see what it does. That's sometimes it'll move it. Sometimes it'll move that way too, to where they dispose of them. You used to be able to throw them in the recycling bin, but you can't do that now anymore.

Jimmy: 14:58

You have to take it to a county hazmat disposal site and depending on where you live, you have to make an appointment for that, so that's what I'm thinking about. Thanks for joining us today in the life and safety podcast. Be safe and we'll see you soon. Peace.