Making Every Household Conflagration-free

Life is a blessing to all of us and it becomes more enjoyable and magical when we spend
it with our loved ones – our family. We Filipinos enjoy our lives almost every day with them or
with someone who truly makes us happy. We enjoy every moment in the comfort of our homes
with everything that we have hard-earned. After realizing and appreciating what we have,
sometimes we feel that all seems perfect. But everything has its good side and bad side because
life can be pretty harsh too. Especially to those whose houses and belongings were rapidly burnt
down in just a couple of seconds. What’s worse is that some lives were also taken by the merciless
blaze. To those who experienced the wrath of a disastrous fire, life is truly grim.
A fire, no matter how large or small, will still be a fire that burns anything that comes into
its way or anything that it touches. It will just be a matter of how great is the damage done by its
rage. Fire is a catastrophic incident which causes great agony not only to the affected residents
but to the public in general predominantly now that the month of March have already started.
This fact makes the Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP) continuously remind the public to be fire
safety conscious especially in our households.
Fire safety is defined by Wikipedia as the set of practices intended to reduce the
destruction caused by fire while fire safety measures include those that are intended to prevent
ignition of an uncontrolled fire, and those that are used to limit the development and effects of
a fire after it starts. Fire safety awareness must always be observed because it will keep our loved
ones from suffering painful injuries or worse – death.
The first reason why we should be fire safety conscious is that, it will prevent our loved
ones from being in danger. A mighty blaze spares no one, young or old, big or small. That’s why
we mustn’t use “octopus wiring”, we must make sure that the electrical wirings in our house are
not faulty and checked regularly by authorities, nothing is plugged, and whenever we use candles
or whenever we cook, we must make sure that the flames are put out when we leave our houses
or even when we are at home to secure that ignition of a conflagration won’t happen.
The second reason is that we can also avoid making others lives miserable just by inflicting
their houses to be on fire because the blaze started in our own house. We must always remember
the great quote by Robert Herrick: “A spark neglected makes a mighty fire.” We must be alert all
the time for our own safety and for other people as well. It will also be a big help if we have the
BFP hotline in our respective homes in case of unforeseen instances.
Being fire safety conscious will also protect our valuables. Nothing is too expensive if our
lives and everything around us is at stake. According to news reports, billions and billions worth
of properties are destroyed due to fires in the country every year. Having a fire extinguisher, exit
doors and investing in early warning devices like smoke detectors and heat sensors in each house
just like what Cebu City Fire Marshal Rogelio Bongabong advised in an interview after the Cebu
City fire is very effective and will not cost more than what can be lost if these are not present in
our houses.
 A fire safety conscious household is secured, comfortable, safe and has a worry-free
family in it. The BFP constantly does their job to inform, protect, and save everyone and
everything from fire and it’s now our responsibility to apply what we are informed to do and do
the best that we can to avoid the ignition of a conflagration in our homes.
Let us always remember that fire can be our good friend but it has the possibility to
become a foe. It can be the worst one that we can encounter for it will not just burn the woods
on our stoves or the thread in our candles but it can also burn our house down literally into tiny
little ashes with our loved ones in it. But we mustn’t let this happen. Thinking that nothing bad
will happen is good but doing our best to ensure that nothing bad will truly happen will make the
difference.