Is your smoke detector an ionization or photoelectric model?   Think it doesn’t make a difference?  The type of smoke detector installed in your home could mean the difference in you and your family having the time to safely escape a fire in the middle of the night or dying in your sleep.

Ionization detectors are the most commonly installed detectors in the United States.  However, there are fire deaths occurring in this country because of the inability of ionization smoke detectors to detect smoke from lower temperature smoldering fires, the type of smoke that can kill a person while they are sleeping.  Deputy Chief Jay Fleming of the Boston Fire Department began studying this phenomenon—the failure of ionization detectors to pick up on the smoke from a smoldering fire early enough—nearly twenty years ago after a rash of incidents where people were dying in house fires where working smoke detectors, ionization detectors, were present.  Fleming has been campaigning to bring the issue before fire departments, the public, and the smoke detector manufacturers. 

Check the detectors in your home today to determine which type you have installed.  If you don’t have photoelectric detectors, go out and get them and install them TODAY.  A smoldering fire that can kill you and your family as you sleep is not going to wait for you to install photoelectric detectors in your home before it strikes.