It's very sad when fire strikes your home. You lose everything. You do not have a chance to save many belongings. You will be considered lucky if you escape with your life.

A person's home is a very private piece of his or her existence. People have been known to struggle for their entire life just to accumulate sufficient material riches and built comfortable shelters for themselves. We can experience a tremendous sense of loss if our homes have been razed to ground by a fire.

Fires know no bounds. We hear so much of this happening in news. Small children and aged persons getting trapped inside while a house is on fire. We see live footage on television showing people jumping out from 3-storey buildings and getting injured. We see terror in their eyes as they make a desperate effort to avoid being burnt alive. We come across stories of people being suffocated by thick smoke from a fire.

Death, injury and material loss is result of fires in homes. It is matter for everyone to take seriously.

Yes, home is as safe as you make it to be - if you take steps to prevent fires from occurring in first place.

Fire can also be a friend or a foe to mankind. Fires have been used for keeping warm, for cooking, for lighting, and so on. If it were not for discovery and utilization of fire, mankind will have a very hard time surviving in cold reaches of Earth. Our early ancestors use fires to ward away wild animals.

Food tastes better when cooked or warmed up on a fire. Farmers clearing fields of weeds have also used fire. Many scientific discoveries are obtained by using heat from fires.

Internal combustion engines, steam boilers, make use of engineering principles of combustion. Engineers and scientists have studied how to harness heat from fires for energy generation.

Fire is a true friend if you know how to use it well. The benefits to mankind are many. Sometimes we forget that it can also be very dangerous.

There is a saying, "It takes a tree to produce one million matches, but it takes a match to destroy a million trees". That's power of a fire. It can also destroy tremendously. It can go out of control. Efforts must be made to tame it.

There should not be any doubt in minds of people. Fire is a boon to mankind. But it needs to be controlled well in order to use it.

People who makes use of fire, (that includes all of us), must know nature of a fire, and how a fire can start. It is a fundamental rule to understand what we are dealing with.

In order for us to use fire properly, we should know something about how a fire can occur. People who have a natural fear of fire usually do not know much about fires. If they know how a fire can start, they will not fear it as much, but rather treat it with respect. The more you find out about fires, better you will be at preventing it from going out of hand.

Starting a Fire

How a fire can start?

In order for a fire to start, three conditions must be met, and they must be present together. The conditions are heat, fuel, and oxygen. If you take any one of them away, a fire will not occur. It is called "Fire Triangle".

The Fire Triangle principle is used in all fire prevention and fire fighting measures. It is very simple. Remove any one of three, and you will not have a fire. Put all of them together and you will have a fire or even an explosion. An explosion is just a rapid burning of a fire.

The three components of a Fire Triangle are heat, fuel and oxygen. The components can appear in many forms and it important for those of us who want to adopt fire prevention measures to look carefully.

Sometimes, people do not realize that all three are present until it becomes too late. For example, a tiny electrical spark that can become a source of heat often cannot be seen at all. Sometimes, even when three conditions are present, energy of heat may not be sufficient to cause a fire.

As with all accidents, when nothing terrible happens, people tend to get careless. Why worry? It did not happen last time, it will not happen now. What they do not realize is that sometime there is not sufficient heat to vaporize fuel.

And fuel does not have to be petrol or kerosene. A piece of wood is combustible when it becomes heated enough. Cloth and paper are also fuels for a fire. The plastic chair in your dining room can be a fuel. In fact all organic materials can burn if it is hot enough.

Oxygen is always present in our atmosphere. In fact we thrive on oxygen in air to live. Oxygen occupies about 21 percent by volume in air, rest being Nitrogen. So in normal conditions, this part of Fire Triangle will always be present and is very difficult to avoid having when we plan our fire prevention measures in our homes. It will be more relevant when we want to stop a fire that has already started. In this case, one of ways to break Fire Triangle is to remove oxygen. There are ways to do this, one of them is by blanketing or smoldering.

However, in our planning for fire prevention, we can look at ways of reducing chances of oxygen rich atmosphere forming anywhere around fuel and heat. This has been known to start fires rapidly.

Carelessness

Sometimes, forgetfulness can result in an accidental fire. Putting a kettle to boil water on a gas stove and forgetting about it can be disastrous. When all water has evaporated, kettle becomes red hot, melt and spread molten metal around.

LP gas leaks are also dangerous. If fuel-air mixture is in just right proportion, an explosion can occur when a heat source is introduced in. Many accidents have occurred when a light is switched on in an explosive environment. The correct thing to do then is to free room of any gas by shutting off source of gas and letting in more fresh air into room.

Chemical reactions can also cause heat and fire. Mixing acids and alkalis, mixing components of some household glue like epoxy resins and hardeners can generate quite a substantial amount of heat that can lead to fires. The containers used and amount of chemical used can have a great effect on heat produced. Plastic containers are known to melt and burn when large quantities of thermosetting plastics like epoxies are mixed with hardeners.

Fires are also known to be started by careless smokers who throw lighted cigarette butts indiscriminately. Many bush fires are started this way. Some areas are especially vulnerable to careless acts like these. People working in garage at home should be very careful not to cause a fire, especially with open petrol cans and other volatile fuels around them. Sometimes, smokers fall asleep while smoking, and their bed or sofa catches fire. The rubber foam mattress used for bedding can catch fire easily.

Although most electrical equipment is quite safe as far as fire is concerned, use of sub-standard and poorly designed equipment may give rise to overheating and fires. Carelessness in area of electrical appliances can cause fires as well as electrical shocks. Many households use multiple power points because they have many electrical equipment that must be used at same time. Videos, television, fans, radios, and fancy lights may occupy only one electrical socket. When a multiple adapter is used, usually connection pins cannot be fitted very tightly. The loose power connections are a source of sparking and deterioration of insulation materials and can lead to fires.

This will be worst if high powered appliances are used because electrical current drawn from these will be very much higher and so wires and connections gets hotter.

Preventive Measures

Since we know that all three conditions of heat, fuel and oxygen must be present in order for a fire to start; our basic fire prevention strategy must be to keep them isolated from each other. Heat sources must be kept away from combustible materials and if possible, from oxygen.

We should take a critical look at all sources of heat in home. They are potential fire hazards. It is good to make an audit of our own homes and make a list, or at least be aware of all heat sources in home. Electrical wiring, appliances, gas stoves, kerosene lamps, candles, electrical light bulbs, ovens, electrical kettles, barbecue fires, burning garden refuse, and so on, are some of them. Even spells of dry weather should be looked at with vigilance.

The sources of heat are many. Below are some of sources of heat that we have to exercise caution, so that we can be especially careful not to let them come into contact with combustibles:

· Kitchen Gas Appliances - The normal appliances in kitchen are gas stoves, and kerosene stoves. These are normally safe, efficient and seldom gives trouble. However, conditions of kitchen stoves are often spoilt by spillage of soups, gravies, and other food materials from cooking processes. After a long time of use, and especially with cooks who do not take special precautions, gas stove become blackened with carbon, oil and other debris. Gas orifices and nozzles get choked up. Carbon deposits pile up. The carbon deposits become its other source of fuel. The soot fire can burn if it is heated long enough.

The environment in a busy kitchen can make it a fire risk. Gas hoses are especially prone to deteriorate if material used can be attacked by presence of oil. Cooking oil is ever present in kitchen environment. Hoses coated by a layer of oil will produce leaks. Any leak in gas hoses is dangerous. It can shoot flames of fire all around place uncontrollably and spread fire.

Do a regular check on your gas hoses and service your gas stove regularly.

· Electrical Installations and Appliances - Mains electrical wiring and their components can be a hidden source of heat that can cause a fire. Sometimes, due to loose contacts in terminals of electrical switchboxes, some sparking will occur. If this is not found out early and rectified, sparking will become worse, and heat produced becomes more. Carbonization of insulation materials will occur. Once carbon gets deposited on insulation materials, it becomes a conductor of electricity. Short-circuiting of electrical wiring will occur leading to overheating of wiring. If electrical protection devices do not work, overheating will cause insulation materials of wiring to even melt or decompose. When decomposition gases given out by insulation materials catch fire, whole house can be burnt down.

Do a regular check up of your electrical wiring in your house, and quickly call in a qualified electrician to rectify any fault.

Electrical appliances also have to be used properly. When people modify equipment indiscriminately, sometimes they leave out or bypass certain safety features put in by manufacturer. Appliances can become overheated and cause burning. It is better not to do any modification unless you know what you are doing.