Make sure your smoke
alarms are working properly!
Sticking with the Fire Prevention week theme, I thought we could all take a moment this evening to check our smoke alarms and make sure they are in working order.
The NFPA website states that two-thirds of fire fatalities were in homes with no working smoke alarms or no smoke alarms at all. That’s reason enough to make sure our smoke alarms are working properly! An interesting fact is that hardwired smoke alarms worked more often than battery-powered smoke alarms in fires that where big enough to trigger them, 92% compared to 77%.
Check out this link pointing out some interesting facts about fire.
Remember to keep extra batteries around the house for those smoke alarms when they decide to have low battery alarms at midnight! This happened recently in our household. We had just settled in bed after an exhausting day; the smoke alarm started that loud, annoying shriek. Oh what a sound, especially when you just closed your eyes! I rummaged through our battery drawer and, of course, no 9-V batteries were to be found. This led my wife to grab the ladder from the garage and force me to “stop that noise!” immediately. Just as I was detaching the smoke alarm from the ceiling, my 3 year old daughter came wandering out of her room, stumbling and rubbing her eyes. Great, now the entire family was awake and grumpy! Since we didn't have any batteries, all I could do was pull the dying battery from the connection and leave the smoke alarm there hanging in non-working order. Boy that would have been a bad night to have a fire. I think it took us several days to remember to grab some 9-V batteries from the store. Reminder to self – always have 9-V batteries in the house!
The City of Houston has a great program to assist with the installation of smoke detectors in homes where they are desperately needed. You may visit their site by clicking: Get Alarmed Houston! HFD Smoke Alarm Program.
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