It seems like every day heart wrench­ing nat­ur­al dis­as­ters dom­i­nate the head­lines and night­ly news­casts.

The real­i­ty how­ev­er, paints a dif­fer­ent pic­ture.  Many fatal­i­ties and tragedies are man-made, and many are pre­ventable.   House­hold fires cause 20 times more fatal­i­ties world­wide than all nat­ur­al dis­as­ters com­bined!

Fire depart­ments con­tin­ue to work to raise aware­ness about where and how fires start. Sta­tis­ti­cal­ly speak­ing, kitchens and bed­rooms are most prone for a fire to start. Oth­er high risks are clothes dry­er vents with lint build up, can­dles, and wood burn­ing fire­places.

It has become tra­di­tion to raise aware­ness twice a year around fire safe­ty.  Every time we change our clocks, from or to day­light sav­ings time, we need to take a few min­utes to go through a fire safe­ty check­list.

Make sure that smoke detec­tors are installed on every storey of your home. (in many juris­dic­tions it’s the law) If you sleep with bed­room doors closed, you should have a smoke detec­tor inside your bed­rooms. Note that young chil­dren are noto­ri­ous­ly deep sleep­ers, they won’t hear a smoke detec­tor on a dif­fer­ent lev­el, espe­cial­ly with doors closed and oth­er white noise present.

Replace bat­ter­ies in all your detec­tors when you change your clocks. Use high qual­i­ty, fresh, alka­line bat­ter­ies, this is not the time to save with cheap dol­lar store bat­ter­ies.

Smoke detec­tors should be replaced at least once every ten years. They are not expen­sive so err on the side of cau­tion. It is also rec­om­mend­ed to clean detec­tors by vac­u­um­ing for dust peri­od­i­cal­ly.

Smoke detec­tor tech­nol­o­gy has improved in the past few years.  You can now buy dual pow­ered  detec­tors that rely on both house pow­er and bat­ter­ies, and detec­tors can be set to trig­ger each oth­er, if 1 detec­tor sens­es smoke, all linked smoke detec­tors will go into alarm.

Avoid detec­tors that require bat­tery removal to qui­et them for false alarms. Choose a detec­tor with a hush but­ton instead.  A detec­tor can’t alert you if it doesn’t have any pow­er!

The bot­tom line is that work­ing smoke detec­tors save lives.   Day­light sav­ings time is the 2nd Sun­day in March.  Let’s make a com­mit­ment to take a few min­utes to be Fire Safe.

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Allan Baum
Security Industry veteran with over 30+ years in the industry. Founded family owned and operated Protection Plus in 1994 with his wife and has overseen its growth since. In addition to working with his wife and son, Allan has assigned the role of Chief Canine Officer to his trusted dog Waub, who joins him at the office every day.