The Importance of Smoke Alarms and Carbon Monoxide Detectors

By Maid Brigade of Northern Connecticut

If you had a fire or carbon monoxide emergency in your home, would you be alerted?

Smoke alarms that are properly installed and maintained play a vital role in reducing fire deaths and injuries.

If there is a fire in your home, smoke spreads fast and you need smoke alarms to give you time to get out.

Having a working smoke alarm cuts the chances of dying in a reported fire in half. Almost two-thirds of home fire deaths resulted from fires in homes with no smoke alarms or no working smoke alarms.

You should install smoke alarms in every bedroom, outside each sleeping area, and on every level of your home. You should also test your smoke alarms every month and replace all smoke alarms every 10 years.

Once a smoke alarm goes off, get outside and stay there.

Here are some statistics that show why smoke alarms are so important.

Between 2007 and 2011, smoke alarms sounded in half of the home fires reported to U.S. fire departments. Three of every five home fire deaths resulted from fires in homes with no smoke alarms or no working smoke alarms. No smoke alarms were present in more than one-third (37 percent) of the home fire deaths.

In addition to smoke alarms, you should also make sure you have carbon monoxide detectors in your house.

Often called the silent killer, carbon monoxide is an invisible, odorless, colorless gas created when fuels (such as gasoline, wood, coal, natural gas, propane, oil, and methane) burn incompletely.

In the home, heating and cooking equipment that burn fuel are potential sources of carbon monoxide. Vehicles or generators running in an attached garage can also produce dangerous levels of carbon monoxide.

The dangers of CO exposure depend on a number of variables, including the victim’s health and activity level. Infants, pregnant women, and people with physical conditions that limit their body’s ability to use oxygen (i.e. emphysema, asthma, heart disease) can be more severely affected by lower concentrations of CO than healthy adults would be.

A person can be poisoned by a small amount of CO over a longer period of time or by a large amount of CO over a shorter amount of time.

In 2010, U.S. fire departments responded to an estimated 80,100 non-fire CO incidents in which carbon monoxide was found, or an average of nine such calls per hour. The number of incidents increased 96 percent from 40,900 incidents reported in 2003. This increase is most likely due to the increased use of CO detectors, which alert people to the presence of CO.

Make sure you and your family are protected with smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors – and that they are working properly!