Impromptu Fire Safety Week Dans le Townhouse

Last night (around dinnertime) we saw a horrifying view from our townhouse: about a half dozen firetrucks and dozens of firemen (and women?) putting out a fire across the street.  Unnervingly, the homes across the way are also townhomes and thus many, many people were evacuated from their homes in freezing temperatures.  It was colder than minus 30 (Celsius), plus a windchill warning was in effect for the region.  Happily, no one was seriously injured and the flames were quickly contained to one room. 

Watching the smoke billow from the burning house made us realize how ill-prepared we are.  We've been meaning to take inventory for insurance purposes for ages and our "go-bags" are only half packed.  So, this week's theme will be fire focused as Hubby & I research and implement fire preparation tactics.  I'm going to figure out:

1. How I can help prevent this from happening to us
2. What a "go-bag" should contain
3. How to best inventory a home (including some neat tips)
4. Whatever else I need to learn to be "fire safe" & cover our butts if this happens to us

This is especially important for other townhouse (or apartment) dwellers because no matter how careful you are, if your neighbour is careless or simply unfortunate enough to have a house fire, you could be much more affected than if your homes were detached.  Although we all know this can happen to anyone.

Yep-that is SMOKE, billowing from a neighbour's window!

The pics are a touch blurry because a) it was really flippin' cold out so we snapped 'em from inside & b) we didn't want to be those people-the ones who cause car accidents by rubber necking to see an accident.  So we peeped from our window.  But, we didn't get a super good view because our backyard has a few nice trees:

Our backyard

Feel free to contribute your own tips, concerns, etc this week.  And don't worry, I won't be all doom & gloom.  I'll still be posting fun stuff too.  Fire safety week won't interrupt the regularly scheduled programming!