During my entire career in the Fire & EMS service I believed and sold the message about smoke detectors: smoke detectors save lives.  Then the message became, working smoke detectors save lives: seems that too often people removed the battery from their smoke detector because it annoyed them when it went off while they were “burning” dinner or they needed it for their TV remote control.  Now comes word that it takes a talking smoke detector to save the lives of children when a fire strikes.

Researchers at Victoria University in Australia tested how sleeping children between ages 6 and 10 would respond to the 85 decibel sound of a standard smoke detector.  The study’s shocking result: only 57 percent of the children woke up with standard alarm, and it took some of the children almost three minutes to awaken!  (A fire does not give you that kind of time to get out of your home!) However, when researchers used a new type of smoke detector—one that enables a parent to record a wake-message in their voice—100 percent of the children awoke to the sound of their mother’s voice within one minute!

If you’re a parent, or you know someone who’s a parent, that last paragraph should scare the daylights out of you.  Since you’re reading this, I know you’re using a computer so TAKE ACTION!  First, send the URL for this website, www.firesafetyprotectionpro.com, to every parent that you know to “sound the alarm.”  Second, go shopping and purchase a talking smoke alarm for your home and install it outside the bedrooms of your children the day it arrives.

Lastly, if you don’t have a home escape plan written up and practiced with your family, do it tonight.  Getting your children awake is not enough: you, better than anyone, knows how tough it is getting them up for school each morning.  You need a Home Fire Escape Plan, and you need to practice it, to ensure that they get out of the house when the alarm sounds.