Smoke Detectors Posts

My wife says that if I write about it, it usually happens…now for my smoke detector story.  The other night at about 2:00 a.m. we were awaken by the smoke detectors going off in the house.  Ours is a one-story house and by looking out the bedroom door we could clearly see that there was no smoke in the house. (Thanks, in no small part, to the fact that you can read a book at night b...

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.&n...

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.&n...

Dear Mr. and Mrs. America, I’m your Smoke Detector and I have a “burning” question: Why don’t you and the rest of the family get out of the house when I sound my warning?  You always assume that somehow I’m not doing my job and that there must be something else wrong besides a fire.  Everyone goes to see what the problem is, i.e., what is causing the detector to malfunction?  That’...

For all you parents out there—I’m picking on you for right now because I really care about kids—what would you do if you found out that your child’s school has not inspected or test its alarm system in the last three years?  Or that none of the fire extinguishers would work if needed?  Or that you child had never participated in a fire drill?  Would you feel safety sending your...