Build Your Defense
Week 3: May 11–17
The best defense is a good offense! Week 3 of Building Safety Month 2025 focuses on how building safety impacts our everyday lives and highlights the things we can do at home to stay safe. Here we share fire and water safety tips, how to limit damages to buildings from natural hazards in your community and how to be more sustainable to ensure a cleaner and greener tomorrow.
Join the Building Safety Month conversation all month long – tag the International Code Council on social media, and use #BuildingSafetyMonth2025 and #BuildingSafety365 to help spread the word!
Fire, Water and Electrical Safety
Modern homes and buildings incorporate the latest building codes and are designed to minimize the possibility and effects of fire and other risks. While building safety professionals help maintain these systems, there are preventative tasks that all contribute to occupant health, occupant safety and security and overall sustainability. Here we've listed a few brief fire safety tips, and be sure review our guides on home fire, electrical and water safety below.
- Develop and practice a fire escape plan. Keep hallways clear of obstructions, do not block or obstruct emergency escape windows and exit doors.
- Put a smoke alarm on every level of your home, outside each sleeping area and inside every bedroom. Test each smoke alarm regularly and keep batteries fresh by replacing them annually.
- Never overload electrical cords or power strips, and don’t use appliances that have damaged cords.
- Make sure all pedestrian gates in the barrier fence for your pool are self-closing and self-latching. Other gates should be equipped with a locking device and should be locked.
- Keep all items that can burn away from your home, clean leaves from your gutters and clear dead leaves and branches from shrubs and trees.
Disaster Preparedness
Just like scouting an opposing team before the big game, it's an individual, family and community responsibility to know which disasters you're at an increased risk for, and how to mitigate those risks by leveraging tips and building codes specific to each disaster. Review these simple, life-saving tips in the resources below, and check out our Safety Toolkits and Ready.gov for specific tips on dealing with earthquakes, extreme heat, floods, home fires, hurricanes, tornados, wildfires and more.
Remember, keep it simple:
- Establish a “safety destination” (like a friend’s or relative’s house some distance away) and plan several different routes to get there so you can drive around roadblocks or hazards. Practice your plan and become familiar with each route so you will be better prepared.
- Whether you are preparing for an earthquake, tornado, hurricane, flood or wildfire, make sure you have an emergency kit on hand with basic necessities. Place all items in a sturdy, closed container outside your home where it can be easily located. Restock food and water twice a year.
- Long before storm season approaches, prepare your house to withstand the effects of a natural disaster. Mitigation can keep natural hazards, like flooding and hurricanes, from having catastrophic impacts.
- You may need to turn off your gas, water and electricity before you evacuate. Each member of the household should learn when and how to do this.
Sustainability at Home
The Code Council is helping our communities forge a path forward on energy and sustainability to address the impacts of a changing climate. Every proactive step we take at home makes a big difference in decreasing our footprint and burden on the system. Here are some tips to conserve energy, water and more!
- Install water-saving shower heads and low-flow faucet aerators and use your water meter to check for hidden water leaks.
- Never dump anything down storm drains.
- Change the filters in the heating and cooling system of your home regularly.
- Replace your light bulbs with LEDs, which use up to 90 percent less energy and last up to 25 times longer than traditional incandescent bulbs.
- Design your home with materials that are easily recyclable, reusable, renewable, durable, affordable and low maintenance.
- Build a rain garden to capture roof drainage and divert it to your garden or landscaping. Be sure to check your local rules on rainwater harvesting prior to installation.
Spread the Word
