On October 28, 2026, Fire Chief / Paramedic Fred R. LaPoint presented “Two Minutes to Get Out” to the Manistee Family Child Care Network. The talk takes on the problem every home child care provider lives with: in a typical home fire you may have as little as two minutes to get out after the smoke alarm sounds, and most of the children in your care can’t get themselves out. The providers asked us to put the whole program online so they could come back to it for a refresher and share it with other provider groups. Here it is, free to use and to pass along.
Start with the video
The talk opens with this side-by-side burn from UL’s Fire Safety Research Institute: two living rooms of the same size, furnished the same way, one with natural materials and one with the synthetic furniture most of us own today. Watch how long each room takes, not the flames.
Video courtesy of UL Research Institutes’ Fire Safety Research Institute (FSRI). If you’re presenting somewhere without reliable internet, FSRI offers the video as a download for training use on its research page.
Download the program
Home Daycare Evacuation Worksheet (PDF, 12 pages)
Presentation Slides (PDF, 21 slides)
Presentation with Speaker Notes (PowerPoint)
How to use it
If you’re a provider, the worksheet is the part that does the work. Fill it in at home rather than at a meeting, so you can walk every room as you go, open every window you list, and try your stairs with a child-sized load. It takes you through your floor plan with two ways out of every room, who carries whom, your meeting place and a warm relocation site for winter, the grab-and-go spot at your main exit, the head count and the 9-1-1 call from outside, a drill log, and a one-page summary of the Michigan home child care rules. When you print it, choose “actual size” rather than “fit to page” so the floor-plan grid comes out square.
If you lead a provider group and want to give the talk yourself, use the PowerPoint. The speaker notes under each slide carry the timing and the talking points, and the whole program runs about 15 to 20 minutes including the video. The notes were written for Chief LaPoint’s delivery, so put your own introduction in place of his. The slides cite Michigan’s Licensing Rules for Family and Group Child Care Homes as filed April 27, 2026; read the rules themselves before relying on them for a licensing question.
For families, too
Our Two Minutes to Get Out family fire escape plan covers the same ground for households, including why smoke alarms don’t wake everyone and how to plan for family members who can’t get out on their own.
Questions?
If you’d like help checking your exits or a walk-through of your home daycare, contact the Stronach Township Fire Department at 231-454-2184 or stronachfiredept@gmail.com.