Lileks: Does it smell like smoke? Douse the toaster

Only you can prevent fires, Smokey the Bear said. This confused me as a kid: What am I supposed to do about it? You're in the forest with a shovel, and you're telling me the entire obligation of stopping forest immolation rests on the shoulders of a 7-year-old? Should I trot alongside cars driving through the woods and try to hit stray expelled cigarettes with a squirt gun?

Anyway. It's Fire Prevention Week, and Minneapolis' city website has a roundup of sensible advice. For example: Have a meeting place where you all gather after you've left a flaming house. My suggestions, in order of desirability:

Cancun.

Perkins.

OK, OK, the sidewalk.

You should also have a ladder to get out of the second floor. I have a ladder. I am so proud of that fact. When I looked at it a while ago I saw it had been sitting under a bed for 10 years with the original packaging still on, cinched together with strong plastic ties. Which meant in a fire I would have to find the scissors. That's how it works: You feel all bright for planning ahead, then realize you would be running through a flaming hallway shouting, "WHO HAD THE SCISSORS LAST AND WHERE DID YOU LEAVE THEM?!?"

It would be better if building codes mandated inflatable slides like they have in airplanes, and they could be controlled by an app on your phone. Downside: As someone who regularly pocket-dials people in my contact list by dropping the phone in a loose pocket, I know I'd be out of town on a business trip and get a call from home telling me I'd managed to trigger every slide and one of them knocked out the mailman.

We also have fire extinguishers in strategic locations. There's one in the upstairs closet where nonessential items are stored, in case an unopened package of Dr. Scholl's inserts from 2002 spontaneously combusts.

The one in the kitchen has instructions for cooking fires: Sweep it back and forth in a constant motion until fire is extinguished. Really? I was thinking of stopping halfway through to let the fire just think about what it did there, and learn an important lesson. Of course I will empty it until there is a mound of foam that looks like the Michelin Man was hit by a flamethrower.

You're not supposed to use water on a grease fire, you know. It's like kicking a drunk. It just makes it mad.

Most important: smoke detectors. They come in several varieties. At Target last night I investigated the options, and found one that said "FEWER FALSE ALARMS." That's a nice feature. I'm always on board with "fewer cardiac arrests from springing out of bed with your adrenal gland spigots opened wide." You're advised to change the batteries twice yearly, but let us be honest: No one thinks of the smoke detectors until you hear cheep! somewhere in the house, usually at 3 a.m.

The previous owners of the house apparently included someone who walked around with a candle and suffered from narcolepsy, because there are smoke detectors every 15 feet. Finding out which one is cheeping is like looking at a barn full of chickens and trying to figure which one passed gas by looking at their expressions.

Newer models are small, unobtrusive and have batteries that last for years. I bought one once, took it home, got out the ladder, removed the old detector … and realized that behind every smoke detector is a circle of the color the room used to be painted.

Finally, there are other things to be worried about. Unattended candles, of course, but I don't know anyone who actually attends to their candles. If you set up a tall candelabra in a room with a lot of straw on the floor and you have small dogs who like to chase each other, it would behoove you to sit there and attend to those candles, but most of us light them and figure the flame will not leap out of the glass and skitter back and forth looking frantically for oil-soaked rags.

So Fire Prevention Week makes me realize that I'm reasonably prepared, what with the emergency ladder, the meeting point, the fire extinguishers, the alarms, the fact that my wife's constant, tiresome nagging keeps me from draping paraffin-soaked cloths over the radiator to dry them out.

But news stories say the mayor and the fire chief are making door-to-door calls to stress fire safety, and I hope they don't ring the bell when the pasta's boiling. Do I turn off the burner to answer the door? If I don't, and we get to chatting at the door while the fire ignites a dishcloth, well, whose fault is that?

It's Smokey's fault. He said only I can prevent forest fires. He said nothing about kitchen fires. Negligence! Let's sue.