[00:00:00] Eric Goranson: It's around the house. Yeah. You think about it, you've got this big floor trust that might have taken a 20 minute fire and now you've got a system in there that might take five. And that's from when the fire started, not from five minutes after the fire department started throwing water on it. So half the time of the time you guys get.

[00:00:22] Eric Goranson: There that is already a problem.

[00:00:26] Steve Kerber: You're spot on and, and actually your numbers are pretty darn close to what we've seen in the tests. Uh, I mean, we've had fire chiefs all over the country. The the give me my 20 minutes back. I mean, give, give me my reliable amount of operating time before I have to worry about this building falling on me or me falling through it.

[00:00:43] Steve Kerber: And, uh, in many cases it's just not there anymore. And it's tough because nobody thinks a fire's gonna happen to them. So when you don't think you're gonna have a fire, These conversations don't come up when it comes to remodeling and renovating your home. There is a lot to know, but [00:01:00] we've got you covered.

[00:01:02] Steve Kerber: This is

[00:01:03] Eric Goranson: around the house. Welcome to Around the House Show. This is where we talk everything about your home every single week. Thanks for joining us today. We've got a special guest in the studio. This is one I've been looking forward to. We got Steve Kerber, vice President and Executive Director of UL's Fire Safety Research.

[00:01:21] Eric Goranson: I. Welcome to Around the House, man. Oh, thanks for having me, Eric. It's gonna be a lot of fun. There is so much to be learned about fire and fire safety, and I don't wanna make this sound like some kind of a preaching thing, but man, it seems to be coming into fall and winter. It, it just seems to be interior house fire time between people with Christmas trees and, and space heaters and just goofy stuff.

[00:01:47] Eric Goranson: And it, it just seems to be so much that that can be.

[00:01:51] Steve Kerber: Yeah, you're spot on. Uh, I mean, the statistics show that as we get into November, December, January, the, the colder months, as well as with all the holidays, [00:02:00] the opportunities, the ignition sources, uh, all of that comes together and we do see an increase in fires and fire fatalities during this time of year.

[00:02:10] Steve Kerber: Well

[00:02:10] Eric Goranson: you guys, I love what you guys are doing for firefighters out there because you know, each department has their own stuff that they're doing, but it's great to see an organization that's really kind of diving into fire science and the causes and what causes a fire and what hurts firefighters as well.

[00:02:29] Steve Kerber: Yeah, I mean, our community relies on our firefighters as kind of our last line of defense and, and in many ways a lot of stuff has to go wrong for them to be needed, but when they are, I mean, lives are on the line, and we have dedicated, like, I mean for me, it's been the last 20 years of my life doing research to make them safer and smarter as well because they, they can't experience everything themselves.

[00:02:56] Steve Kerber: So if we can set up some experiments, we can help them understand the [00:03:00] environment that they work in. Uh, they can be smarter, they can be more effective, and we all benefit from that.

[00:03:06] Eric Goranson: I don't know how many times I've seen, you know, when I was a kid, I'm in my fifties now, but fire department roll up. Maybe air packs weren't put on, they're running into the fire.

[00:03:18] Eric Goranson: You know, there's, there's not a lot of thought going in and out. And now with the training and the safety for those guys, because so many firefighters have been getting lung issues and, and lots of different cancers from that kind of stuff. It's really had to rethink of how people fire fight these days just because of some.

[00:03:37] Steve Kerber: Yeah, it's an incredibly complex profession and and I use that profession very broadly because of the million firefighters we have in the United States at 700,000 of 'em or thereabouts are, are volunteer. So these are folks that are, uh, leaving their lives, leaving what they're doing and serving their community for nothing in return.[00:04:00]

[00:04:00] Steve Kerber: So yeah, we wanna do everything we can to make sure that. They're smart. They've got the training, they've got the resources. And, and I'm glad you brought up the, the cancer issue. Uh, the International Association of Research on Cancer just linked the actual. Act of firefighting as cancerous. So, I mean, it's just the nature of of doing that job is led to a higher incidence of cancer.

[00:04:30] Steve Kerber: And, uh, in many ways that's not fair. That's not what they're signing up for. So what can we do to limit their exposure? And the bottom line is where we live and where we work is just full of plastics. It's full of synthetics, it's full of all kinds of chemicals, uh, that not only you breathe in, but also that transport through their skin.

[00:04:51] Steve Kerber: Yeah. So, uh, it's, the danger is eman both acute and chronic. Yeah,

[00:04:58] Eric Goranson: and one thing that I've had too, we had [00:05:00] another firefighter on here, um oh, a couple years ago, and we had a discussion just about building science, about how trust roof systems and floor systems with those stamped metal plates can be such a danger to homeowners and firefighters when you get a fire in that cavity and all of a sudden these cool, cute little metal plates that are pushed in holding all this lumber together start to curl.

[00:05:24] Eric Goranson: And now you have kindling instead of something that was really bolted together.

[00:05:29] Steve Kerber: It, it's been a fun evolution. Uh, we study this stuff all the time because in many ways stuff that makes perfect sense for the construction industry, whether it's stronger, lighter, cheaper, all of those things are good. The problem is in many ways, it also from a fire safety perspective can be disastrous.

[00:05:50] Steve Kerber: Uh, so you mentioned metal plate, connected wood trusses. I mean, we've done all kinds of tests on different engineered floor systems and roof systems, and what you see is there, there's [00:06:00] no free lunch, right? So the, the trade off of having, uh, engineered eye joist, Or metal plate, connective wood trust. Is that wood burns?

[00:06:08] Steve Kerber: We know wood burns. There's less of it. Yeah. Uh, so the burn we've been using, we, we replaced mass with math, which from a construction standpoint is genius. Yeah. Um, we don't have the, uh, Two by 12 dimensional lumber that spans 40 feet like we might have had in the past. We, we cut all those trees down. Yeah.

[00:06:29] Steve Kerber: Uh, so now we've gotta make it other ways, whether it's OSB or plywood or combinations of all of the above and great for construction. But we've gotta protect it. We've gotta, we've gotta get the equal level of safety that we had previously. And in many cases, that doesn't get figured out until after the fact.

[00:06:50] Steve Kerber: So number of firefighters have fallen through floors into basements on fire and, and are no longer with us. And, uh, we've gotta catch up and make sure that [00:07:00] we, that safety's not being compromised in the name of, of cost or something like that. Yeah. You think

[00:07:05] Eric Goranson: about it, you've got this big floor trust that might have taken a 20 minute fire and now you've got a system in there that might take five.

[00:07:14] Eric Goranson: And that's from when the fire started, not from five minutes after the fire department started throwing water on it. So half the time, by the time you guys get there, that is already a problem.

[00:07:24] Steve Kerber: You're spot on and, and actually your numbers are pretty darn close to what we've seen in the tests. Uh, I mean, we've had fire chiefs all over the country.

[00:07:31] Steve Kerber: The, the give me my 20 minutes back. I mean, gi give me my reliable amount of operating time before I have to worry about this building falling on me or me falling through it. And, uh, in many cases it's just not there anymore. And it's tough because nobody thinks a fire's gonna happen to them. So when you don't think you're gonna have a fire, these conversations don't come.

[00:07:53] Eric Goranson: Yeah. Yeah. And something, and especially now that we're starting to, to get even more complex with building, we're starting to [00:08:00] put, you know, solar arrays up on the roof. Now that is constantly powered. You know, I, I, I talk to electricians, they're like, oh, on a fire, you just turn the handle off. I'm like, yeah, you're not powering the rest of the house.

[00:08:13] Eric Goranson: But there's still power up in that when you guys have to jump up on that roof. It's

[00:08:17] Steve Kerber: still. Yeah, it'd be an interesting conversation if you showed up and someone's house was on fire and you said, uh, sorry. We can't do anything until the sun goes down. Right. Is, uh, not gonna be a, a acceptable thing to have a conversation about.

[00:08:31] Steve Kerber: Uh, and then that energy's gotta go somewhere, right? So that's going to energy storage systems, and that might be in the garage or in the basement, which poses new hazards. So yeah, the firefighter's workplace and even our homeowner's living place is constantly evolving. Uh, so we've gotta understand these hazards.

[00:08:48] Steve Kerber: We've gotta understand the pluses with the minuses as we. Design these things and put them into, into our homes. We need to make sure that everybody understands what's going on and [00:09:00] yeah, nothing comes with no new risk. So we can accept that risk. I mean, I don't think anyone's gonna push back against renewable energy and, and all of these great concepts for our environ.

[00:09:13] Steve Kerber: Uh, however, let's, let's make 'em safe.

[00:09:17] Eric Goranson: Yeah. Steve, it's like in my garage. We were just talking about this before we hit the, the go button. I've got 20 batteries hanging up on my wallet system back here that you can see at least, and there's probably a few more back over here. But that changes, you know, in a garage that used to be, okay.

[00:09:32] Eric Goranson: It was the, the chemicals, it was the paints, it was maybe a propane tank, but now you've got batteries that can be their own. Mass and chargers as well. You know that that major sin of a garage, of walking away with that battery charger, going for a weekend or a week when it should just be charged and turned off, that that puts in a whole other risk for firefighters inside a garage, let alone the house.

[00:09:59] Steve Kerber: Yeah, firefighters [00:10:00] and homeowners, uh, I mean, it's, we're introducing new ignition sources and these batteries are critical to our lives now. I mean, we, we've got 'em for everything, and we need to count on the fact that they're not gonna catch fire when we're not around or whatever the case is. I mean, as I look behind you as a fire protection engineer, uh, immediately I see it's like, all right, we've got the batter.

[00:10:22] Steve Kerber: And then they're in plastic and the plastic's on wood. I mean, that is a perfect recipe. Should there be a fire to spread that fire? Um, so it's, it's one of those things, I mean, you're smart, you, you turn, you put 'em all on a power strip and you turn that power strip off when you leave the room. I mean, what you're doing there is your.

[00:10:43] Steve Kerber: Reducing your risk of overcharge of one of those batteries by making sure that it is not supplied to your house electricity all the time. Uh, we're also counting on the, that particular brand you have behind you of having good quality control [00:11:00] of having testing from a third party listing organization.

[00:11:04] Steve Kerber: Uh, so you've got peace of mind that you don't have a poor quality cell in there that's gonna go into thermal run. Just cuz of manufacturing defect or something like that. Um, but ultimately you don't have full control over that. So it's uh, it's a little bit scary. Yeah.

[00:11:21] Eric Goranson: You know, the ones that I think to me in a house are the, are the most scary are those little handheld phone recharges.

[00:11:28] Eric Goranson: Right? The, the little handheld. It could look like a little brick, it could be a little tube. Those things and, and companies will buy them and give them away and, and you know, it's, it's at a fair or a home show or whatever, but usually those are the lowest quality ones that they got off the internet. And I can't tell you how many pieces of carpet that I've seen, how do I fix this question?

[00:11:54] Eric Goranson: And I'm like, man, you were in a fire. You just caught it in.

[00:11:59] Steve Kerber: And that's [00:12:00] it. And that's, uh, I mean, we constantly talk about what is the state of the fire problem in the United States and things like that. And I mean, what this brings to mind is, The only the stats that get tracked are when the fire department gets called.

[00:12:16] Steve Kerber: Uh, we have more fires every single day that homeowners luckily either the smoke alarm goes off earlier, they witness it, or whatever the case is, and you can dump a cup of water in it. Well, the time between cup of water on carpet and solving the problem and fire next to a sofa and the house is burned to the ground, uh, could be a really thin.

[00:12:38] Steve Kerber: So it's, uh, it's, it's important. I mean, these new technologies are gonna come with, with new fire problems and yeah, we, we need people to just understand what's going on there. I mean, you're right, these, these tchotchkes that you get from conferences, they're, they're not buying you the, the $50 battery bank.

[00:12:58] Steve Kerber: They're trying to give you the $5 one [00:13:00] so they can put their brand on it. And hopefully you see that brand for the next, uh, two years of your life. Um, but. Chances are also could

[00:13:08] Eric Goranson: be the brand that burns the house down too. it

[00:13:10] Steve Kerber: very well could be. You're exactly right. I mean, that's why you want to follow all the best practices and hopefully buy a quality product.

[00:13:17] Steve Kerber: Cause yeah, your, your brand recognition might be linked to someone's worst day. Yeah,

[00:13:23] Eric Goranson: that's, and that's not good. Hey, I wanna talk a little bit about fire dynamics and people inside the house before we get into some of these other discussions. But some things that homeowners can do, and I'm talking just leaving the bedroom door.

[00:13:36] Eric Goranson: While you're sleeping can be such a big difference. It's crazy. Between that and a battery and a, and a smoke detector or carbon monoxide, some basic things can make a life difference for you in a house fire.

[00:13:52] Steve Kerber: Yes. I mean, you're, you're absolutely correct and I mean, we see this time and time again as we do our research, as we conduct our [00:14:00] experiments and things like that, that, uh, it's really the, the main ones are.

[00:14:06] Steve Kerber: The fire's fast and fire's gotten faster over the decades because of all the synthetics that we put in our homes. These plastics burn faster, um, and release more energy faster, and people just, I think, make the assumption that fire's been slowing down over time that we've been figuring these things out and cavemen figured out fire.

[00:14:31] Steve Kerber: So it should be getting safer every day beyond. And the truth of the matter is all these other choices we're making as a society are going in the opposite direction of that. So we actually have the, the chance of dying in a fire today is higher than it was 50 years ago. Yeah. And I don't think people realize that.

[00:14:52] Steve Kerber: I mean, that should blow people's minds. Um, I mean, where they should feel the safest in their home is actually the [00:15:00] least controlled environment we have. Uh, usually where people. There's amazing codes and standards and sprinklers everywhere, and fire doors and exit stairs and, and they do evacuation drill.

[00:15:14] Steve Kerber: Yeah. And, and all of that. We don't do that in our houses. Mm-hmm. . Um, so the best you can do is, uh, Well, the best you could do would be to get a residential sprinkler system. Sure. Um, but a lot of people don't do that, or it's not required where they live and it can be expensive. Mm-hmm. . Um, so that tends to not happen unless it's required.

[00:15:34] Steve Kerber: And there's only two states in the United States, Maryland and California that require sprinklers in homes. Um, so everybody else is either gonna have to ask. Uh, and demand it. Or even if they do demand it, they might not be able to get it. So from that point on, it's all right. What do, what do we have control over?

[00:15:54] Steve Kerber: Well, one, if fires fast, we wanna be notified as quickly as possible. So [00:16:00] that's where the smoke alarms come in. Yeah. And uh, a lot of people, again, they don't think a fire's gonna happen to them, so they don't think about it. And there's a lot of nuances around smoke alarms that, that people probably don't realize.

[00:16:11] Steve Kerber: Um, one is that you want one on every level of the home. And you want them in every bedroom and outside every sleeping area. So what this does is it gives you the greatest chance of being warned if, if I told you, you only have three minutes from when a fire starts until you can safely get outta your house.

[00:16:32] Steve Kerber: You want as much of that three minutes as possible. So if you've got that coverage of smoke alarms in your home, the chances that you get notified, let's say within a minute, go up. Um, and then there's also interconnected alarms now as well, and they can be both hardwire connected and also kind of wifi interconnected.

[00:16:54] Steve Kerber: So let's say you're, I don't know where you're at, I dunno if you're in your garage or in your basement, or, I'm in the garage right here. [00:17:00] Yes, you're in the garage and let's say you had a fire in your garage. You don't wanna wait until the smoke gets out of the garage into the house, up to the bedrooms, and then setting off the alarm next to your bedroom.

[00:17:15] Steve Kerber: That could take minutes. Um, and by the time that happened, especially with a

[00:17:20] Eric Goranson: fire door, fire sheet rock in there, you've done a pretty good job of keeping it inside that structure, but you also have stopped yourself from knowing about it as.

[00:17:29] Steve Kerber: Exactly. So you, you could be totally on top of a fully involved garage on fire, where the only way you would know about it is if the neighbor across the street saw it and came and knocked on your door and rang your doorbell.

[00:17:40] Steve Kerber: Yeah. Uh, we don't want that to happen. We want you to know as fast as possible. So that's really where the interconnected alarms come into play. Um, people also don't realize smoke alarms expire. Yeah. So 10 years. That you need a new, you need a new alarm. Those sensors don't last forever. And I think people don't realize that.

[00:17:59] Steve Kerber: I mean, [00:18:00] I, I know even my going to my in-law's house and it's like, Oh man. These are the alarms that came with your house when it was built in 1982. Um, you're way past, so great Christmas gift, by the way. Yeah. Um, give the gift of safety to your family. Uh, check how old the smoke alarms are and replace 'em all if, uh, if they're older than 10 years old.

[00:18:22] Steve Kerber: It's funny,

[00:18:22] Eric Goranson: I got into an argument with a client over this subject, so I'm an interior designer by trade. I'm not doing it anymore, but I walked into her house and we're walking through. This is about three years ago, and I look up and it. That was a 1972 smoke alarm. It just was. And I looked at and I go, I go, that's like, that's like drinking six month old milk up there.

[00:18:44] Eric Goranson: Come on. And I knew that she used to work for the fire department and she's like, oh, it'll be fine. And I looked at it and I go, come on, you know better. And I gave her hell for it and she, the next week I was over there. She goes, you jinxed. Like what? [00:19:00] She goes, that thing last night started going off for no reason, and I realized I was wrong and I had to go up and change it.

[00:19:06] Eric Goranson: But even as a professional, she knew, but she was just, Playing with fire, but I went a step further at my house. I went with that Google system out there, the Nest Protect. So now what I love about that, I have it in my kitchen and you know, a common place for a fire and I'm adding it throughout the rest of the house.

[00:19:26] Eric Goranson: But what I like is it'll tell me when it detects a little bit of smoke. Yep. And it'll actually text my phone. So maybe the dogs are home and I'm not, I'm not running around and I can see if I was to ever have smoke showing up in the house, I'm gonna note there's smoke before the fire and I'm not even have to be home for it, which I think is huge, especially if you're a, a parent with teenage kids at home.

[00:19:48] Eric Goranson: You know, those are all important things. And I know it's a hundred bucks for a, for a smoke alarm, but a hundred bucks is pretty cheap when it comes down.

[00:19:58] Steve Kerber: Yeah. Uh, it's hard [00:20:00] to put a value on the, the safety of your family. And I mean, I know there's people out there that don't have a hundred bucks to spend on a smoke alarm, but, um, yeah, it's, it's vital to have that early warning.

[00:20:12] Steve Kerber: I mean, I can't think of a more helpless feeling in the world than. Knowing that something's going wrong in my house and my kids are in the house. Right. And even if you're not there, I mean, even if they're teenagers, that's, yeah. I mean, I, we know how that works. They're, they're blasting their music or they're playing their video games or whatever, and I mean, you could have a fire next to 'em and they wouldn't even know it was going on.

[00:20:33] Steve Kerber: Cause they're so into the game and there's, I mean, they're just headphones are on or whatever. Yeah, yeah. They're, they're in a different world. I mean, sometimes maybe figuratively or literally, depending on, uh, if they've got their VR headset on and everything else. And it's, uh, yeah, I mean all, all these crazy new things that were evolving, we've gotta pay attention to the bread and butter safety aspects as well.

[00:20:57] Steve Kerber: Um, you brought up the closed door. I mean, so here, here's the [00:21:00] next component. We got the smoke alarms covered. Yep. The closed door doesn't cost a. Absolutely free. Just a simple behavior. And we've done experiment after experiment, and what continues to stand out is the difference between surviving a fire and not surviving at that fire could likely be a cheap hollow core door.

[00:21:21] Steve Kerber: That is as, I mean, talk about another evolution. I mean, you know this as you've been designing homes and things like that. Mm-hmm. , I mean, we used to have real doors. I mean, we used to have solid wood doors that were actual useful, um, For, for many things, sound dampening and, and, uh, things like that. And they, and they were beautiful.

[00:21:44] Steve Kerber: And now, now you'd probably pay a ton of money to get one of these things at some reclaim store or something like that, but they would hold up tremendously to whatever exposure you'd put on them. And then it was like, well, that costs too much. We don't have that wood. So then we started. Cheapening up and [00:22:00] now it's essentially a, a very couple really thin pieces of wood with cardboard in the middle, uh, to, well, that doesn't like to burn.

[00:22:08] Steve Kerber: Yeah. You can even get 'em molded and everything else. And it's wood pulp and it's not even wood. Yep. Um, but we've gotten really smart at making that look okay. Yeah. Uh, but what that means from a fire safety perspective is that, I mean, you, you want that barrier between you and where that fire could be or where that fire is.

[00:22:26] Steve Kerber: And it can cut off that source of smoke, that source of heat, and buy you very valuable time to figure out how do I get out of this place. Yeah. Um, which brings us to the, the last really important piece, which is escape planning. Um, if you think that you can wait until you actually have a fire and I'll figure it out on the fly, um, not a chance.

[00:22:51] Steve Kerber: I mean, we see it every single day. I mean, there, there was one day this year in the United States where people did not die in a [00:23:00] home fire one day. Wow. One day We're most of the way through November. Exactly. I think we're somewhere up to 2000 people dying in their homes. And, uh, these are all prevent. Um, so that door,

[00:23:14] Eric Goranson: yeah, I've got in our master closet, uh, cuz we're second floor and it's just my wife and I kids are off to college and gone, but, so it's just the two of us.

[00:23:21] Eric Goranson: But I've got one of those escape platters that I can throw over the deck outside or out the window in the bedroom cuz I've got a slider out the, you know, out the bedroom, right out into the deck. And I could pop out that way if we had to. I don't have to

[00:23:33] Steve Kerber: worry about it. Yeah. Yeah. You thought about it, you're like, all right, well if I, if I get a fire anywhere in my house, Chances are that by the time I wake up, realize what's going on.

[00:23:44] Steve Kerber: The wife and I start. What the heck is that noise? And you investigate and try and figure it out that your exit out of the front door, the way you would want to go, is likely gonna be cut off by smoke. Mm-hmm. . So if it's gonna be cut off by smoke, what's the plan [00:24:00] B? Well, plan B is out the window. All right.

[00:24:03] Steve Kerber: Well, I don't wanna hang and drop out the window. Uh, so we're gonna go ahead and, and get a ladder that, that we can go ahead and get out and, and get down. Um, if you didn't have that ladder, Plan C is door shut. Get to the window, call 9 1 1 and, and start yelling. Hopefully the fire department gets there in time and that door lasts long enough with the heat, uh, or a neighbor gets a ladder to you or whatever the case is.

[00:24:30] Steve Kerber: But I mean, our research has showed that you can take a living room fire from a small flaming ignition to the living room, completely involved in fire in about three minutes. The average response time of the fire department in the United States is about six minutes. So you do the math. I mean, you need to be able to get yourself out.

[00:24:53] Steve Kerber: You need to be able to buy yourself time because it's on you for quite some time until the fire department's gonna get there and they're [00:25:00] coming fast. They're doing the best they can. Uh, depending on what kind of community you live in, it could be four minutes. In a city, it could be 40 minutes in a rural area.

[00:25:12] Eric Goranson: I literally have a quarter mile away. I have a fire department right there, but who says they're not on another call when my call comes in and now the next one is two miles that way. So now I just tripled my response time.

[00:25:26] Steve Kerber: Absolutely, and, and no control of you whatsoever. I mean, if you've got two departments that close, you're in a pretty well protected area.

[00:25:34] Steve Kerber: That's not common for most of the country. Uh, but you're absolutely right. They could be out helping Mrs. Smith with a heart attack. And, uh, they're not available when your house fire comes in. We don't plan these things. Yeah.

[00:25:46] Eric Goranson: It's random. It's random. The thing that I'm a, a big proponent of and it saved my butt one time.

[00:25:54] Eric Goranson: So it's one of those things that, that I've always done is have a nice [00:26:00] big fire extinguishers in certain places around the house. Sure. And you know, I've got three in the garage by every door, one by every. You know, I, I, I was like one in the kitchen, one in the master bedroom, just because if you need that as an option, you have an option right there.

[00:26:20] Steve Kerber: Yeah. These are tough. I mean, as a someone like yourself that, that plans for this and knows how to use a fire extinguisher, it sounds like you might have had to have, uh, deployed one or two in your life. I got a story for you there, . And, uh, it's tough because fire grows so rapidly. That the important guidance there is one, the fire's gotta be small.

[00:26:43] Steve Kerber: Mm-hmm. , and two, like you said, you've got 'em by your exit points, which is critical because you don't want anything between you and a safe way out. So in many ways people need to realize either, either I'm getting this fire or I'm not. But [00:27:00] I'm not gonna get cut off from safely being able to get outside should it not go well.

[00:27:05] Steve Kerber: Um, and it's, that's

[00:27:07] Eric Goranson: why they're there for, that I didn't think of as, okay. I'm gonna go on and and play hero here. Yeah, mine was okay if I need this to get out cuz I'm in a bad situation. I'm gonna wish I had it there. Well, at least I give myself one other option. Yeah,

[00:27:20] Steve Kerber: you, you got one other option. I think the key is don't underestimate the smoke either.

[00:27:24] Steve Kerber: Um, don't, don't go crawling through smoke. If you can't see your exit from where you're going and it's not clear to you, don't try and hold your breath and go, don't try it. I mean, we. We, we tell kids, stay low and go. It's like, well, no, stay low and go. If you can see your way out, don't just take a shot at it.

[00:27:45] Steve Kerber: Cuz I think that's where we see a lot of issues is people like, well, my front door's there, all I have to do is hold my breath and run. And the smoke is thick. The smoke is hot. It's not the white wispy smoke that you see at a [00:28:00] campfire or anything like that. It's, it's cost you,

[00:28:03] Eric Goranson: it's nasty. It's

[00:28:04] Steve Kerber: brutal. Oh, got it.

[00:28:05] Steve Kerber: So full of chemicals, a few breaths could be deadly. Um, so it's like, no, you gotta go plan B. You can't, if Plan A is out the door and you can't see the door, Please turn around and, and get a door between you and where it is and find another way out. Um, because I think that, that people take a chance and, uh, even a little bit of, uh, carbon monoxide, you're not gonna be thinking straight.

[00:28:29] Steve Kerber: Yeah. And, uh, it goes downhill quick,

[00:28:31] Eric Goranson: man. I, my fire story, I had, I was dating this girl 10, 12 years ago and, uh, she was helping care for her dad, her mom and dad. Her dad had Alzheimer's and so, They had the, she was staying in the unit kind of down below nice daylight basement house, nice view everything else, and she's got her kids getting get 'em ready for bed.

[00:28:52] Eric Goranson: I'm watching TV hanging out, getting ready to head back to my place, and I hear one smoke alarm go off upstairs and I'm like, Hmm. Then I hear the [00:29:00] second one go off and I went, Okay, so I went running upstairs and I had already, because of his mental condition and his illness went, okay, we're gonna put a few, cuz he'd liked to go.

[00:29:11] Eric Goranson: We, we always were trying to battle the stove with him. So I had it on the galley kitchen. I had two huge fire extinguishers on the wall and he had gone in there with this big 64 ounce truck stop coffee mug from the eighties and put it on the electric burner and tried to reheat his coffee. Yeah. Didn't know any better.

[00:29:30] Eric Goranson: Yeah. And then once it caught on fire, he starts taking a, a, doesn't think to turn off the stove, but he's got a rag and he's trying to beat the fire. Well now he's got, we got eight spot fires in the kitchen cuz plastic's burning everywhere. Yeah. So, man, I got him outta there. I used both of those five pound fire extinguishers after getting the, the heat off of it just to get the fire out in that kitchen.

[00:29:55] Eric Goranson: And it was a heck of a mess. But it was, fire department was [00:30:00] already called. I was just, okay, I think I can get this, but, uh, whew. It was i 10 seconds away from that. Getting outta getting outta.

[00:30:08] Steve Kerber: You saved his life. I mean, there's no, there's no doubt about it. I mean, we, and we see this all the time, it's, uh, those that, that have illnesses or, I mean, they're just, they're, they're not all there.

[00:30:20] Steve Kerber: And what seems common sense to just about anybody. They see the opposite as common sense. I mean, we see it, I mean, people putting plastic things on burners or, or going to cook something and then they fall asleep or wander off and do something else and next thing you know, it's, uh, you got a deadly situation.

[00:30:39] Steve Kerber: So I have a, I

[00:30:40] Eric Goranson: have a pet peeve right now over this, and I don't know if you've ever seen this on Etsy and stuff out there. People are making these stove covers. I dunno if you've seen these, like see you got a 30 inch range and they're building a wood cutting board to go over the top of that thing.

[00:30:54] Eric Goranson: That's terrible. Jump on. You can go find a hundred companies making these things on [00:31:00] Etsy right now. You can see 'em on Amazon, you can see 'em on eBay. Every time I go rifling on people, when I see these in woodworking groups and everything else going, all it takes is for somebody to bump. So, And that's outta control.

[00:31:14] Eric Goranson: And you just gave it a huge ignition source. I mean, even in the eighties when you used to see those little tin metal things that you'd put on the stove covers that grandma used to have, those things would always have coil marks and stuff on 'em. Cuz somebody would leave it on And that was

[00:31:28] Steve Kerber: metal. Yeah.

[00:31:30] Steve Kerber: Oh, it would catch all the trees and yeah, you don't keep it clean and all of a sudden that's just a catchall to, to get burning. But I, I hadn't seen those yet. I mean, that sounds like a awful idea. But we're, I mean, we solve one problem, right? I mean, we, okay. We, we don't have a lot of space in our kitchen.

[00:31:48] Steve Kerber: Mm-hmm. . So we go ahead and come up with this ingenious idea of, well, I can turn my overtop of my stove into a, a cutting station. And, uh, people just don't think, That, you [00:32:00] know what, no, this could be a fire hazard. Um, cuz they don't think it's gonna happen to them. It's, it's not, they're not being malicious, they're just indifferent to the fact that that could happen.

[00:32:10] Steve Kerber: And it's, uh, this is what we see every single day.

[00:32:14] Eric Goranson: Yeah, there's a new product. You know, I'm a speaker for the uh, uh, national Association of Home Builders on their technology front, and I don't know if you've seen it yet, but it's a new system out there called Ting Labs. And what that is, it plugs in the wall and it detects electrical fires.

[00:32:31] Eric Goranson: I've been working with those guys for about four years now, and man, I love that thing. Anything I can do to plug in my wall to help sense what could be an electrical issue in my house, man, that's peace of mind.

[00:32:42] Steve Kerber: Certainly peace of mind. Uh, but yeah, it takes. Desire to know that that could be an issue. But yeah, I mean, electrical fires remain a top cause of fires across the United States, and, uh, in many ways you, you can't see most of the system, right?

[00:32:58] Steve Kerber: Yeah. So to, to have [00:33:00] that heads up that, uh, something's not right. Especially with all the loads that we put on our power systems these days that maybe they're not designed for. Uh, what a great tool. Yeah. Somebody brought that to my attention recently cuz they. I think their insurance company had come to them and say, Hey, we want this, you to use these devices, uh, to prevent these loss and sound.

[00:33:24] Steve Kerber: Sounds like a great idea.

[00:33:26] Eric Goranson: Yeah, it's really cool. It shows, uh, and I've tested it too. I actually was doing some work around the house and I played with one of my old outlets with the stab connector in the back and said, okay, let me see if I can force carefully this thing. Sent me a warning and I'm like, wow, okay.

[00:33:42] Eric Goranson: That worked. It sensed that I had a bad stab. Okay. I'm a believer, you know? Sure.

[00:33:47] Steve Kerber: So, yeah, I know. We, we've done some tests in the past where you look at, uh, the amount of those kind of, uh, rubber coded staples. That you put on all the wiring throughout [00:34:00] your house and like what are the chances that you either hit it in too far or get one of the legs through the wire and short it out or whatever it is.

[00:34:09] Steve Kerber: There's just so much potential and none of it's malicious. It's just, I mean, it, there's thousands of those things in a house, right? Yeah. And are you gonna get 'em all? Perfect? Well, maybe, maybe not. No. No. And it's not gonna be day one. I mean, it could be year 20 or something like that, that it finally gets hot enough to cause a fire.

[00:34:30] Eric Goranson: Yeah, it's absolutely crazy. Well, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about some of the fire science stuff you guys have been doing with studies. I mean, I was kinda reading through some of the stuff you guys do where it's always fascinating to go in and watch, you know, some of those test burns with homes.

[00:34:47] Eric Goranson: Where you've got a fully loaded building, for instance, said, okay, this is as real as we can make it, and it's fascinating to see how fast. Those fires take off. And now that it seemed like [00:35:00] in the eighties and seventies we, we were trying to put on these chemicals to stop fires and on furniture and stuff, but all of a sudden we realized those were filled with cancer and now things seem to be more flammable.

[00:35:11] Eric Goranson: What have you guys been finding with this fire science stuff? Cuz I think it's gotta really help us at least understand what's going on out.

[00:35:19] Steve Kerber: Yeah. Uh, if, if you name a challenge in the home, we've tried to study it in some sort of way, at least to, to give the public the knowledge of, of what is going on and, and what they need to be ready for.

[00:35:31] Steve Kerber: And I mean, upholstered furniture is just one of those things where, um, When we had cotton furniture, uh, I mean, I think back to my grandmother's house where all 80 year, yeah. Plus year old furniture. Maybe it had a plastic cover on it or something like that. But for the most part it was, uh, absolutely all cotton stuffed and it had springs in the cushions and stuff like that.

[00:35:57] Steve Kerber: It's hard to make one of those things burn. I mean, you, you could [00:36:00] drop candles, cigarettes, all kinds of stuff on it, and it's gonna burn slowly. Yeah. Um, well, cotton doesn't age well. It, it gets, uh, it doesn't get comfortable after a certain period of time and sometimes it smells and all kinds of other stuff.

[00:36:15] Steve Kerber: So in the fifties when we started creating plastics, an evolution of that is polyurethane. And it's incredibly durable. Um, it's easily to clean. Uh, it holds its shape. All the good things you would want in a comfortable piece of furniture except. It burns like crazy if, if an ignition source comes in contact with it.

[00:36:40] Steve Kerber: And, uh, I mean, you can see that evolution from like seventies, eighties, nineties to today, where all of the natural furnishings have been moved out of our homes. Mm-hmm. , we've replaced it all with synthetics. And I think there was ideas back in the seventies and eighties that, yeah, we'll put flame retardants, uh, in this foam and [00:37:00] it won't burn.

[00:37:01] Steve Kerber: Uh, some things kind of got mixed up there where they, they didn't put enough in. And that the stuff that they did put in was starting to migrate out of the foam and get into the dust of the hope got. And that's where, I mean, we absolutely do not want flame retardants in people's systems. Yeah. Um, it leads to all kinds of negative outcomes, including cancer and, uh, thyroid issues and everything like that.

[00:37:29] Steve Kerber: Um, so now the kind of current state of the art is no chemicals. But with no chemicals comes no nothing to slow the fire down. Yeah. So we have all the furnishings being sold in the United States have little to no fire protection built into them at all. So, uh, if you do get a small ignition source, that fire's gonna spread incredibly quickly.

[00:37:54] Steve Kerber: And a lot of our tests have showed, uh, pretty much three minutes. Three to [00:38:00] five minutes, you've got a room completely involved in fire and. Then it starts spreading to everything else we were talking about the lightweight construction, the open floor plans. Mm-hmm. , um, all of these features that we want in our homes all really go against common fire safety practices and knowledge.

[00:38:19] Steve Kerber: I mean, the open floor plans, I mean, that's, I would doubt you would build a house without an open floor plan these days. Right. It's

[00:38:26] Eric Goranson: so true. It's so true. You know, and the people that don't have them want. For sure let's pop out those walls and it's, it's still common to this day. Absolutely.

[00:38:35] Steve Kerber: Yeah, I mean, who the hell was thinking about, uh, load bearing walls at any point?

[00:38:41] Steve Kerber: Now all of a sudden everybody's concerned with them. Which, which ones can I take out? And, uh, now that I have these laminated beams and all this other lightweight construction materials, and I can span long distances because I couldn't before, um, I mean, we kind of joke you were, you were limited with the dimensions of your [00:39:00] rooms as you were building homes based on how big of a stick could you get?

[00:39:04] Steve Kerber: And, uh, so every, I mean, if you had a 14 foot room, man, you found some big lumber. That was, that was way to go. You're not in like 10 foot rooms. Uh, but all of that has ramifications. It's all a big system that kind of adds up.

[00:39:19] Eric Goranson: What's your take on the new products that I'm seeing coming out now, and I don't want to get into so much into brands, but there's a lot of new building materials that are starting to come out, like framing lumber and stuff that have treatments and stuff on 'em.

[00:39:31] Eric Goranson: And, and I'm starting to see more and more of that. That's kind of a, a, you know, maybe it's a certain color or something like that. But you're starting to see some, some fire rated building materials as far as the rough framing. What's your thought on.

[00:39:44] Steve Kerber: Uh, as long as they're tested and certified and they do what they're claimed to do, um, what I think people need to realize is there, there's no magic bullet here, wood burns, regardless of what you treat it with.

[00:39:59] Steve Kerber: [00:40:00] Um, and it all depends on, we kind of say how hard of a hammer you hit it with. So if it's got a really small ignition source next to it, it could probably resist that really well. Um, but if you've got a sofa on fire, No, it's not, it's not gonna make much of a difference whatsoever. And, uh, you're gonna defeat whatever treatment, whether it's pressure treated or topical treated, or whatever it is that gets put there.

[00:40:28] Steve Kerber: Um, some of the tests we did early on, we thought that might be a great solution to, and we talked about getting your 20 minutes back to the fire service. Yeah. Uh oh. Yeah. You can roll this paint. And it'll resist it. Not, not with a legit content fire. Yeah. Is is that gonna help you? So yeah. It all depends on what, what is the use case and what are you trying to accomplish?

[00:40:51] Steve Kerber: There's no magic oil or paint or whatever that we've seen that's gonna solve all the problems. Well, and I always

[00:40:59] Eric Goranson: thought that too. [00:41:00] When I saw it, I went, oh, this is cool if it worked. But by the time that fire has gotten to framing, I mean, you've already gotten through the drywall, you've already gotten through maybe insulation or whatever else in there.

[00:41:13] Eric Goranson: You already got a hot mess going already. A

[00:41:15] Steve Kerber: absolutely. And, uh, I mean, you brought up drywall. I mean, here, here's another one that we learned somewhat accidentally. Um, we had filled a bunch of houses to do the tests that you were talking about. We're gonna do firefighter ventilation tests. So in order to do that, we need living rooms on fire and, and everything burning.

[00:41:34] Steve Kerber: We're building real houses. So from one year to the next, we're like, all right, well, we're gonna look at something different, but we're going to build the same houses again. Well, we started seeing the drywall started falling off the ceilings really early in the fire, and we hadn't seen that before. And it's like, what's going on here?

[00:41:53] Steve Kerber: Well, that was when they made the transition from drywall to ultra lightweight drywall. Oh, [00:42:00] no. They got really smart. I mean, the drywall industry is genius. It's like, what am I carrying this heavy border around for if I can make this lighter? So they make it lighter by blowing air bubbles into it. So they blow air bubbles in, which means it has less gypsum, which means it's fire resistance is not gonna be as good.

[00:42:20] Steve Kerber: And what we saw was if you use the same screw pattern, From the regular drywall to the ultra lightweight drywall, it starts falling off sooner because there's not as much grabbing those screws and holding it to the walls and the ceilings. Um, but there's no test for a house. That says you need a certain fire resistance.

[00:42:41] Steve Kerber: They have it for commercial buildings, they have it for family , they have it for a garage. Uh, they do not have it for most of your house, so there was no test. It had to meet. The only test it had to meet was a bending strength test. That way when you're carrying them around and transporting it, you're not ruining a whole bunch of [00:43:00] boards.

[00:43:01] Steve Kerber: So these are things that happen over time that every little piece might not be noticed, but when you start adding a bunch of 'em up, we're not, we're not in a good spot right now. So every new

[00:43:12] Eric Goranson: house that I'm seeing out there, I mean, if I walk into any major brand home center, those stacks are always of the light, drywall, every, you can't the regular stuff

[00:43:22] Steve Kerber: anymore.

[00:43:23] Steve Kerber: Yeah. Yeah, it's all ultra lightweight or whatever their proprietary version of it is. Yeah. Um, yeah, no, you would have to special order what you and I would consider regular drywall from 15 years ago or whatever the case is.

[00:43:38] Eric Goranson: Or you'd have to just go with the five eights fire rock rated stuff.

[00:43:43] Steve Kerber: And

[00:43:43] Eric Goranson: that, which no one's gonna do.

[00:43:45] Eric Goranson: No, it's so heavy. Nobody likes to work with it. The electricians didn't set the boxes at the right depth. You know, you chase the problems around, but, uh, it's expensive. How would your make me think about that? If I'm building a house right now, that I would go, huh? [00:44:00] Maybe fire rate of drywalls the way to go.

[00:44:02] Steve Kerber: Yeah. Or, or even if you went ultra lightweight. If you look at the specs, when they use ultra lightweight into a fire rated system mm-hmm. , they put way more screws in the field than you normally would. Ah. Uh, so, but people, no, no residential construction guy is gonna put more screws than they do traditionally.

[00:44:25] Steve Kerber: No. Um, because it's not required. So, yeah. I mean, we're gonna start seeing more fires that would've been maintained in a room are now gonna get into the structure.

[00:44:35] Eric Goranson: Oh. That's disappointing. I want us to go the other direction. It's

[00:44:40] Steve Kerber: just I'm with you, . Yes. We gotta start working the other direction, but I guess we, we need to figure out how to balance all of these innovations with a fire safety mindset as well.

[00:44:54] Steve Kerber: And commonly no one's being malicious. No one's sitting there saying, I want houses to burn to the ground. [00:45:00] Yeah. Uh, there, it's just these kinda tangential issues that, that.

[00:45:06] Eric Goranson: You know, it's like I'm out here on the West coast of course, so I'm out in, in, uh, you know, outside fire country, you know, I'm outside of Portland, Oregon.

[00:45:13] Eric Goranson: But it's something that, uh, in our, you know, July, August, September for us is bad out here. And that opens a whole other can of worms cuz I have neighborhoods here in newer construction where I can tell you that me being a layman looking. Block going, all right, these houses are six feet apart from each other.

[00:45:35] Eric Goranson: They're gonna try to contain this to the block, not to the

[00:45:39] Steve Kerber: house. You're so right. Um, and yeah, I mean, you're, you're in wildland urban interface land, uh, is what we like to call it, where the houses get built into the, the woods. It's beautiful. Um, it makes sense, but we also need to then use practices. That are not gonna [00:46:00] have the fire going from the trees to burning blocks down, um, easily.

[00:46:07] Steve Kerber: And there's a lot of things that we're learning that you can do. Um, a lot of it revolves around construction practices and, uh, getting things like vents and, and. Pathways from the outside to the inside that meet certain requirements. Sometimes those requirements don't exist yet. We're still running tests and try and figure these things out.

[00:46:27] Steve Kerber: Uh, and examples, ridge vents. Yeah, they're, that seems to be huge. Yeah, it's not, we haven't figured that out yet. We're still working on that. But I mean, as we speak, I've got a team up in Philadelphia that's looking at separation distance. Mm-hmm. , uh, is looking at different siding materials and the difference that that makes to structure, to structure fire spread.

[00:46:46] Steve Kerber: And then next week they're gonna be looking at windows. Cause that's another one where, I mean, Double pain, triple pain. Uh, argon, no argon, uh, tempered, not tempered. There's, there's all kinds of options. [00:47:00] If you're gonna build your house in the middle of the woods, it might make sense to go with a particular set of windows, uh, to try and.

[00:47:07] Steve Kerber: Keep your house from burning down. Um, and we're trying to figure out what that is. That way we can give that knowledge to people that might be conscious of, uh, alright, I'm willing to build in the interface, but because I'm willing to do that, I'm gonna take these extra steps because it's not, it's not just their home.

[00:47:26] Steve Kerber: I think that's another thing that people need to realize. It's not their home, it's not their community. It's the firefighters that they're gonna put in harm's way, trying to protect where they live. And there's other people at stake here and, uh, we've gotta be smart across the board.

[00:47:43] Eric Goranson: I mean, my neighborhood here, where I live in, um, it's very much a tree community.

[00:47:47] Eric Goranson: It's forest. I have, you know, 15 trees that are over 300 years old that are, you know, 200 feet tall here. And I don't get ounce, a daylight except for maybe a six square feet area. [00:48:00] I have full tree cover over my house, and so I start to think that way too. For instance, going, okay, we've done such a great job of creating windows for hurricane areas.

[00:48:10] Eric Goranson: Mm-hmm. , you're right, we should have something that's gonna be more resistant for fire as well.

[00:48:16] Steve Kerber: Yeah. And what, what guidance do you get? I mean, there, there's all kinds of, I mean, you're sounds like somewhat of a special case. I mean, we try and get people to not have trees within, uh, like flammable shrubs within five feet, and then like 25, 5000 feet.

[00:48:32] Steve Kerber: We start looking at, all right, what's our defensible space here? It sounds like you could have a fire roll right over the top of your house and there there is no defensible space.

[00:48:41] Eric Goranson: Yeah, there's not, and unfortunately in my tree area it would take me four years of permitting to actually get it to be what would be smart.

[00:48:48] Eric Goranson: And they probably wouldn't allow me to do it anyway.

[00:48:50] Steve Kerber: No, absolutely. So then, alright, well if we can't do that, then what are the next steps? Well, you want to have a fire rated roof. You don't want to have wood shake. Roof. [00:49:00] Um, and then there's little things like, uh, keeping things around your deck clean, uh, certain gutters, materials.

[00:49:08] Steve Kerber: You make your fence out of keeping your gutters empty. Cause yeah, it might, it might not be a fire in your community. With, with a little bit of wind and some dry conditions. It could be five neighborhoods over that's on fire and the embers are all falling on your house. I mean, I'm sure you've seen it recently.

[00:49:26] Steve Kerber: I mean, you could be smoked out by a fire that's in a different state. Oh, yeah.

[00:49:32] Eric Goranson: We, we, we've gotten smoked out here from that. And uh, when I grew up in eastern Washington, I actually got knocked off the roof of my house by a pb y plane doing a water. So, yeah, I was taking a picture. I was up there setting a sprinkler cuz we had a wildfire coming and I set my sprinkler up.

[00:49:49] Eric Goranson: I had a camera with me too, just to see if I could get some shots up there while I was up there, plane came in. I'm like, oh cool. And I took a couple pictures, then I went, that water's still coming out. [00:50:00] And man, it knocked me off into my yard.

[00:50:03] Steve Kerber: Just, holy cow, that is, uh, got

[00:50:06] Eric Goranson: lucky. But I did that sticky, nasty soap filled water, whatever they put in there for fire retardant.

[00:50:13] Eric Goranson: That was brutal. But, uh, yeah, I've seen the wildfire stuff and it's scary. And, and I know people on the East coast don't really get to see that as much as we do out here, but, uh, it's, it's real for half the country.

[00:50:25] Steve Kerber: It. Well, I think they said, I forget what the stats are. Something like 75% of the country is now considered part of the wild end urban interface.

[00:50:33] Steve Kerber: Mm-hmm. . Um, what we don't have on the East Coast is the topography. Um, and the same types of fuels you have. I mean, we tend to, it doesn't get as dry. Yeah, but I mean, you live it all year round. I mean, there is no season anymore. I mean, it's just whatever the weather pattern happens to be. Uh, the Marshall Fire in Colorado a couple years ago, I mean, it, it wiped out a thousand homes and then it snowed the next day.

[00:50:58] Steve Kerber: Yeah. So [00:51:00] it's, it's a whole different environment and yeah, just stuff we need to pay attention to be smart about. There's a lot of resources out there, uh, that you could look at to, we're not calling it, uh, We used to call it hardening your home, uh, from wildfire. But now apparently that terminology, people don't know what that means.

[00:51:19] Steve Kerber: They don't know, like they think they're trying to buy harder materials or something like that, . So it's, it's trying to create a, a fire protected home, um, from the wildland fire. So, Yeah, a whole nother topic we could talk for hours on. Geez.

[00:51:34] Eric Goranson: Absolutely. That's a rabbit hole. We could all dive down. But before we go out here man, what are some of the other tips that you've got out there?

[00:51:40] Eric Goranson: If we if to, to wrap up this one here, cuz I know you and I can do this for hours cuz there's so much great information here. Yeah, I mean, I,

[00:51:48] Steve Kerber: I want to go back to the, the kind of the top three, I mean the smoke alarms, making sure that one. They're not expired and that you got 'em one on every level of your [00:52:00] home, in every bedroom and outside every sleeping area.

[00:52:03] Steve Kerber: If you can have 'em interconnected, even better. Um, they also make long life batteries now. So you could get a 10 year sealed smoke alarm so you don't have to change the batteries for daylight savings and, and all of that stuff. It's, it's not gonna chirp at 3:00 AM . Uh, cause that's when all the batteries tend to go bad at like two or three in the morning just to piss you off with the chirp.

[00:52:26] Steve Kerber: Exactly. Um, so Well, and that's another thing that you don't have to worry about with your, uh, your new. Is, you can see the battery life of that anytime you want. You don't have to wait until it gets to, uh, 2% at three in the morning. You can do it on your terms, which is good. Exactly. Uh, then we've got the escape plants, and that's the A, B, and C uh, escape.

[00:52:50] Steve Kerber: Plan A is out through your normal way to come in and outta your home. Typically, it's the front door. Make sure everybody knows that. Make sure everybody practices that. [00:53:00] Um, know not to go through the smoke. And if your exit's blocked off by the smoke, plan B. Plan B is go to another way out. Typically, it's a window in a bedroom or something along those lines.

[00:53:12] Steve Kerber: And if you can't get out, let's say you're on the third, fourth, fifth floor of a building or something like that, you're plan C, get behind the closed door, get as far from the fire as possible, get to a window, call for help and wait to be rescued. So simple b. Yep. And then the closed door closed before you doze, we say, put that barrier between you and a fire before you go to sleep at night.

[00:53:33] Steve Kerber: And it could make a tremendous life and death difference, uh, if you have a fire in your home. So it's, uh, doesn't cost a thing. Uh, we've seen tests where we got a thousand degrees on one side of the door and a hundred degrees on the other. And, uh, you wanna be on that hundred degree side, not connected to that thousand degree.

[00:53:54] Steve Kerber: And if you're out

[00:53:54] Eric Goranson: the remodeling guys, take a look at those solid core doors. Might help you out in the long run, . [00:54:00] Absolutely. Absolutely. All right, Steve, thanks for coming on today, man. And uh, we're gonna do this again, Steve Kerber UL Fire Safety Research Institute. Thanks. Appreciate it for taking the time today, man.

[00:54:13] Eric Goranson: This is great. I hope we've, uh, chained some lives.

[00:54:15] Steve Kerber: I hope so too. Uh, people have this within their control if they think about it. And, uh, appreciate you getting these important messages out to your audience. It's an important one. And

[00:54:24] Eric Goranson: that's a wrap and thanks for listening to Around the House.