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Practise your household escape decisions

28 original questions based on U.S. Fire Administration guidance, checked 11 September 2026. This curated practice does not assess your home or replace a household drill. Follow your local fire department and building evacuation plan, including individual assistance needs.

Choose a topic, home context, household need or difficulty focus. Each uses a defined question pool.
Optional. Leave blank for a new round, or enter a seed to repeat its questions and choices.

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Review what to practice next

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Next, draw or update your household plan, check usable exits, agree who helps anyone needing assistance, and practise together. A score here is not proof that your household can evacuate safely.

Use the USFA escape-plan worksheet
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Missed answer review

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Topic performance

Which topics need another look? Counts describe only the questions in this round.

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Answer ledger

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Smoke Detector Placement Calculator Plan preliminary smoke alarm locations for bedrooms, sleeping areas and each level with purchase needs plus cooking, age and accessibility checks.
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A blocked hallway can make the familiar front door an unsafe escape route. Home fire escape planning means agreeing how people will receive a warning, leave by a usable route and meet outside, including who needs help. The time available after a smoke alarm sounds may be less than two minutes, so stopping to pack or collect belongings cannot be part of the escape routine.

An escape map shows doors and windows throughout the home, with two ways out of each room. The second way provides an alternative when the usual route becomes dangerous. It is not an instruction to use both during one escape. A route also has to work physically. Furniture blocking a window or an exit latch that its intended user cannot operate needs a planning solution before an emergency.

The household needs one agreed outdoor meeting place, in front of the home, where everyone knows to gather. An indoor room near an exit does not serve that purpose. Reaching the meeting place allows people to check who has arrived without searching back through the building.

Warning and assistance arrangements depend on the people who will use the plan.

  • Babies and very young children need an adult assigned to wake and help them. A child capable of leaving independently needs practice reaching the meeting place even when an adult is not beside them.
  • Someone who is deaf or hard of hearing may need suitable alarm-linked vibration or visual alerts rather than an ordinary audible alarm alone.
  • A person using a walker or wheelchair needs to check the route with that mobility aid. Assistance should be discussed with family or neighbours and the building manager or fire department. Ground-floor sleeping near an exit can make escape easier when feasible.

Rehearsal checks more than whether people remember a drawing. It can reveal an unusable latch, uncertainty about who helps a child, or a route that does not lead to the agreed destination. Practise with everyone in the household at least twice a year and continue all the way to the outside meeting place. The smoke alarm test button can provide the familiar warning for a planned drill; creating actual smoke or fire is not a safe substitute.

In an apartment or high-rise, the household plan also needs to fit the building's evacuation plan, shared corridors and exit stairs. Someone who cannot use stairs needs an individual assistance plan in advance. Copying another building's route or assuming help will arrive at a particular room is not adequate preparation.

These are general U.S. planning principles, not an individual evacuation assessment or proof that a household can escape safely. Follow local fire-service and building instructions. Emergency examples using 911 apply to the U.S. context; confirm the emergency number where you live.

How to Use This Tool:

Choose a broad round for general review or a focused round for one part of your household plan. The bank contains 28 original text-only questions based on U.S. Fire Administration (USFA) guidance, with guidance checks recorded on 11 September 2026.

  1. Choose a Practice focus and Question count. The default is eight questions from All household planning topics. A single-topic focus uses four questions. Recheck the count after changing focus because the available lengths depend on the selected pool.
  2. Choose when Feedback appears. After each answer, the default, reveals the correction and explanation immediately. At the end records each choice without revealing correctness until the round is finished.
  3. Set Replay seed under Advanced only when you need a repeatable round, then select Start practice. A blank seed generates a new one at Start; keep that resulting seed and the same setup and bank version to replay the round. An entered seed may contain up to 128 characters. A seed from an earlier round may already be filled in, so clear it for a fresh draw.
    If Start practice is disabled, choose an offered focus, feedback mode and question count, and shorten an overlong replay seed.
  4. Select one of the four answers. The choice is recorded and locked immediately for that attempt. Continue with Next question after each answer and View results after the last one. Every question must be answered before a final result is available.
  5. Review Missed answer review for corrections and Answer ledger for the complete round, including your choices, correct answers, explanations and source information. Identify the escape decision you misunderstood before retrying it.

Interpreting Results:

Practice status reports how many questions have been answered during a round. At the result, the fraction changes to correct answers out of the selected question count. No misses this round means every selected answer was correct, not that all fire-safety knowledge or practical escape skills have been assessed.

Topic performance shows counts of Correct and Missed answers, not topic percentages. The counts describe only this round, and an untested topic is not rated. Suggested review guidance highlights a category with the most misses rather than assigning a proficiency level. The Answer ledger still provides the review if the chart is unavailable.

Retry missed starts a new attempt containing only questions answered incorrectly, potentially just one question. It is absent after a perfect round. Replay same seed repeats the questions and answer order, while Try a new seed changes the draw and may still include familiar questions. To choose a different focus or return to a broader round, use Change setup.

There is no official pass mark, certification or safety-competence rating. These are original practice questions, not official USFA examination questions, and the curated bank is not exhaustive. The quiz does not inspect a home or teach firefighting. Use a missed explanation to decide what to check in the actual home, such as an exit opening or assistance arrangement, then rehearse the household plan rather than treating a higher score as proof of readiness.

Technical Details:

Escape decisions depend on whether a route remains usable and whether the person can leave without assistance. Closed doors help limit smoke and fire entering corridors and stairs. Staying low while moving toward a safe exit does not make a route blocked by fire or heavy smoke safe to enter.

Safe responses and their limits

The response changes with the situation. Building-specific plans and emergency-service directions remain important, especially when someone cannot self-evacuate.

Situation Response and important boundary
An exit door feels hot Keep it closed and use another safe way out. Do not open it to investigate.
Smoke is encountered while moving toward a safe exit Stay low and continue toward the exit without delaying to collect belongings. This is not advice to force a route through heavy smoke.
Fire or smoke prevents escape Close the door and cover vents and gaps around it with cloth to reduce smoke entry. Call 911, give your location and signal for help at a window with a light-coloured cloth or flashlight.
A high-rise evacuation route is safe to use Use exit stairs rather than an elevator unless the fire department directs otherwise. Close doors behind you and do not prop corridor or stair doors open.
A resident cannot self-evacuate or use stairs Call 911, explain the location and assistance needed, and follow emergency instructions. Be prepared to shelter as directed; do not assume responders already know the resident's location.
Someone has escaped but a person or possession is still inside Stay outside. Tell the fire department immediately if someone may be trapped rather than re-entering to search or retrieve belongings.

Smoke alarms provide the warning on which these decisions depend. Coverage includes every level, inside bedrooms and outside separate sleeping areas. Interconnected alarms spread the warning so one detecting alarm can trigger the others. Monthly testing checks the warning devices; installation and maintenance still need to follow manufacturer instructions and local requirements. A working alarm does not guarantee a fixed period of safe air.

How the practice score is calculated

Each correct answer earns one point and each incorrect answer earns zero. There is no weighting, partial credit or negative marking. Let N be the number of questions selected for the attempt, A the number answered and C the number answered correctly. C, A and N are whole-number counts, with N greater than zero and 0 ≤ C ≤ A ≤ N. The point total is C, out of N possible points, with a range from zero to N.

Accuracy expresses correct answers as a percentage of the entire selected round.

Accuracy (%) = 100 × C N

Progress instead measures how much of the round has been answered, regardless of correctness.

Progress (%) = 100 × A N

The percentage calculations use the unrounded ratios. The final result shows the exact correct/total counts, while only the visible progress percentage is rounded to the nearest whole percent, with half-percent ties upward. Unanswered questions remain in the denominator but do not count as incorrect and do not enter a missed-answer retry. Completion requires an answer to every selected question. Feedback timing changes when corrections appear, not the points awarded for an answer.

Question coverage and sampling

The seven topics each contain four questions: Routes & meetings, Plan & rehearse, Escape & stay out, High-rise plans, Children, Accessible escape and Smoke alarms. The home-type, household-need and difficulty choices reuse these questions in overlapping pools rather than adding new banks.

Practice focus Coverage Questions in pool Available round lengths
All household planning topics All seven topics 28 4, 8, 12, 20, 28
Any single Topic focus Only the selected topic 4 4
Home type · House All topics except High-rise plans 24 4, 8, 12, 20, 24
Home type · Apartment / high-rise Escape & stay out, High-rise plans and Accessible escape 12 4, 8, 12
Household need · Children Routes & meetings and Children 8 4, 8
Household need · Accessible escape High-rise plans and Accessible escape 8 4, 8
Difficulty · Essentials A fixed selection across the seven topics 15 4, 8, 12, 15
Difficulty · Applied situations A different fixed selection across the seven topics 13 4, 8, 12, 13

Selection is without replacement within a round, so a question does not repeat in that attempt. Short rounds do not guarantee balanced topic coverage, and difficulty choices are fixed selections rather than adaptive difficulty. Keeping the seed, focus, count, feedback mode and question-bank version unchanged reproduces the questions and option order. Choosing the full pool covers every question in that pool, not every possible home fire situation.

Privacy Notes:

Answer checking takes place in your browser, but the page address carries the setup, replay seed, recorded answers and your position in the attempt, including unfinished rounds. Anyone with that address can restore those choices. The address can remain in browser history or shared messages and may be transmitted when the page is loaded or shared. Avoid personal information in the replay seed.

Change setup clears the current attempt and removes its saved state from the current address; it cannot erase copies already shared. Additional resources for the chart may require a network connection, so browser-based scoring is not a guarantee of offline operation or no transmission.

There is no account-based progress history. Invalid or incompatible saved attempts are rejected with Saved attempt unavailable rather than partly restored. Start a new round from setup when that message appears.

Worked Examples:

An indoor meeting place

Choose Topic · Routes & meetings for a four-question round. Selecting “The kitchen beside the exit” for the meeting-place question is incorrect. If the other three answers are correct, the final result is 3/4, equivalent to 75%, and that topic has three correct answers and one miss. The correction identifies an agreed outdoor spot in front of the home. Retry missed then contains only that question; answering it correctly produces 1/1 on the new attempt, not a new four-question result. Apply the lesson by agreeing and marking the actual outside meeting place with the household.

Progress before deferred feedback

To practise without seeing corrections along the way, select eight questions from All household planning topics and choose At the end. After the first answer, the summary shows 1/8 answered and the progress display rounds 12.5% to 13%. That percentage says nothing about whether the answer is correct. The selection is locked, but corrections remain hidden. Continue through the other seven questions and choose View results to review the completed attempt.

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