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First thing any householder/tenant should do is to draw up an escape plan and make sure every member of the family understands it
We are fortunate that we have two means of reasonably easy escape from upstairs windows. NONE of our windows are locked. All have locks on them but the keys were binned. I would never lock the windows.

When the kids were little but old enough to dress themselves and sleep in separate rooms, I went through the evacuation drill with them. It resulted in my youngest going walk about on the roof on one occasion :)eek:) but at least they'd know what to do in a fire.
 
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NONE of our windows are locked. All have locks on them but the keys were binned.

25 years ago, I had arguments with wife to leave patio doors keys ON the locks. In one case I bent the key inside the lock so it would not come out. Imagine in a fire and in a panic you are trying to find your way in the dark and/or smoke, and when arriving at the patio door you then have to start looking for the right key! With young kids.

That was a bungalow. Now we are building a 2 storey house, and it dawned on me that if the staircase area is on fire, then have no other route of escaping to the ground floor - so I decided we needed an easy way out from upstairs, and not everyone can use flimsy ladders or walk on roof tiles to climb out of dormer/upstairs windows.

I am saying this because designers (architects/builders/tradesmen) do not think how a broken leg, an elderly person, a partially paralysed person (like myself) will find insurmountable obstacles within a typical house, eg very narrow patio doors with large drop to the patio, steps without handrails, baths you need to climb in and out of with no handles anywhere near, things like that. My father in law lived to 86 in such a house full of obstacles and he was very lucky all his life he was never disabled. His surviving wife, now at 85, has on multiple occasions suffered falls and great loss of mobility, and this house is a death trap for her. I have long been partially disabled and suddenly realised how badly made our houses are, taking for granted a certain level of agility and capability which we do not all have forever.
 
Same here. We never lock the windows internally and the 3 of us occasionally have practice runs of trying to 'escape' in the dark. This involves going to a room selected by random from a hat. All lights are turned off so it is completely dark, (i.e. takes place at night and as we live in the countryside there are no street lights anywhere). Most times the selected rooms are upstairs and at the bottom of the stairs there is a door that is always closed at night to help prevent fire spread. Once through this door, depending which direction you need to go, there will be at least 2 more doors to get through. If using the front exit the first door has a small snip catch to feel for and turn and the front door has a nightlatch with snip and a chain to operate. Go the other way and there are two internal doors, (no locks or catches), then either the patio doors through the lounge or a uPVC door in the utility room. Both doors will be locked with the key in the lock but fully turned closed.
In reality we have an accessible torch in each room near the door but we don't use them in the practices in case we drop the torch/batteries/bulb fails in reality etc. Basically we try to base it on worst case scenario.
@akist my wife is disabled and has difficulty with mobility so we have tried to make emergency egress ass simple as possible. Her only concern is the speed she is able to move at is getting slower as the years pass but we are so scrupulous in ensuring everything is safely turned off each night that we believe we have minimised the risks as best we can.
 
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