In 2006 thousands of Americans felt the ravages of fire in ways large and small.  From small rural communities to large urban centers, hostile fires continue to inflict a tremendous physical, psychological, and financial impact on Americans.  Many of my previous postings in this blog have focused on ways to prevent this needless carnage, over 80 percent of which occurs in residential housing, i.e., our homes.

Prevention is obviously the key, but what about when fire does “rear its ugly head” to have a negative impact on you and your family?  What can you do to begin putting the pieces of your life back together again?  Recently, residents of a major apartment complex in Conshohoken, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia were faced with just such a scenario.  A major apartment fire in an apartment complex under construction displaced 375 nearby residents and left them picking through the rubble of what were once their most prized possessions.

The local NBC television affiliate in Philadelphia, WCAU Channel 10, “jumped in” and created an awesome informational page on their website, All That and More.  “Hats off” to Tamara Vostok, Digital Content Producer at WCAU, and her folks for compiling this information into a document that is not addresses the aftermath of a fire, but those things we can all do to better prepare ourselves before a fire strikes.  I am also thankful to Tamara for contacting me by e-mail and offering this information as a link on this site.

Take the time to print this information out and use it to better prepare you and your family to cope with the aftermath of a fire.  Fire is not necessarily something that happens to other people.