New Jersey: Keep Your Doors Closed & It Could Just Save A Life

My dad has found a new thing to obsess over no matter where we are:

Nicole, close the door behind you! 

Nicole, always keep doors closed in your place!

Via Facetime: Why is that door open? 

Finally I asked Papa Murray....what's the deal?

It turns out he was pestering me for a pretty valid reason that I think everyone at the Jersey Shore...New Jersey...and the globe could learn from.

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My father is an avid news watcher and recently, he saw a story about a fire that tore through an apartment building in the Bronx that took 17 lives and left dozens of other tenants critically injured.

One of the tenants made a grave mistake that actually helped the fire to spread that much faster - but more on this in a second.

Let's take a look a quick Fire Safety refresher because fires are FAST and DANGEROUS.

With this fire in the Bronx specifically, a mistake was made that actually helped the fire to spread even faster.

In the article on ABCNews.com, "A door that was left open [which] allowed the fire and smoke to spread," and according to the news report my dad saw, the door being left open acted as a wind tunnel sucking the flames toward another area of the building.

As a result of this horrific tragedy, officials are trying to get the word out: closed doors can save lives. 

New Jersey: Always close any door you walk through -- especially during a fire.

Based on this advice, it is not the worst idea in the world to keep the doors in your home closed if they don't need to be open. Otherwise, flames would spready that much fire if a fire -- knock on wood -- did ever start.

If I may add a layer to this: in Shore towns like Lavallette, Point Pleasant, Seaside Heights and more, houses are no more than a few feet apart from one another.

If a fire is given the opportunity to spread, it would not just be a house that would be destroyed -- we are talking about an entire block.

Instances like this are exactly why various apartment buildings have doors that automatically close on their own.

We might want these all over the Jersey Shore after reading that story....just sayin...

So now it is my turn to be Papa Murray:

"Close that door behind you!" 

"Always keep doors closed in your place!"

"Why is that door open?"

Remember, it is because I care.

Now that fire safety is covered, let's see where you could put these rules to work: