Kurt Hahn After overcooking dinner in the oven, the smoke alarm just wouldn't shut up...so you happened to rip the smoke alarm off the ceiling, tear the battery out and leave it on the kitchen countertop...finally silence!  It has been a long stressful day, its now 8pm and you still have to feed the family so you order take-out.  After a dissapointing dinner, as you grow tired and distracted by the stressors of life, you forget to replace the smoke alarm where it belongs and lay to sleep with your family.

It is now 2:30am, the family is deep asleep upstairs in their bedrooms and the electrical outlet to your kitchen refrigerator snaps, crackles and pops as it overheats and begins to smolder.  There was only one smoke alarm on the first floor of your home but you haphazardly forgot to put it back in it's place after it was a nusiance when dinner burned up in the oven.  At least you had one more outside the bedrooms on the second floor.  It is now 2:45am, the fire has spread on the first floor and filled the house with toxic smoke as you awake startled to hear the fire alarm sounding.  As you leap from bed to your feet, you smell smoke, and SCREAM FIRE!  You open your bedroom door to find thick brown smoke filling the hallway and drop to you knees choking as you try to find your children's bedrooms to get them out.

This story sounds like the begininng of a nightmare and is unfortunately too common as carelessness leads to injury and death from fire.  Homes with no smoke alarms or no working smoke alarms account for about two-thirds of residential fire deaths.  Most fatal fires happen when families are asleep because they are unaware of a fire until there is not enough time to escape.  When you go to sleep, so does your sense of smell...without a working smoke alarm, you may never wake up!

According to the United States Fire Administration (USFA), every year in the United States, about 3,000 people lose their lives in residential fires.  Ask your neighbors about citizens in your community who have perished in a fire and you will certainly hear about too many.  Most recently in 2008, a Cornwall resident perished in a fire at home.

To learn about Smoke Alarms - Why, Where, and Which - Click on the title of this article to view a factsheet from the Consumer Product Safety Commission that will answer all of your questions about smoke alarms.  If you have specific questions that you would like answered, please email me at kurt@advancefiresafety.com

Be Safe!