Smoke Alarms save lives!!
You may have heard this a million times but do you know that your smoke alarms work as they are meant to? Have you taken the time to ensure you and your family are protected? Please take the time to do so now; here is what you need to know:
- Location - New homes will have the proper number of smoke alarms in the required locations. If you live in an older home you may not have adequate smoke alarms:
- On every level of your home
- In the hall outside of the bedrooms
- Hard wired or battery-operated? All smoke alarms should be hard-wired; however, battery-operated smoke alarms will give the early warning if they are maintained. The hard-wired smoke alarms should have a battery backup in case of power outage.
- Interconnection of Smoke Alarms - what does this mean? When one smoke alarm is activated, it will activate all smoke alarms that are interconnected (battery-operated interconnected smoke alarms are available). This is to ensure that if a smoke alarm detects smoke in a remote part of your home, you will hear the smoke alarm activation even when you are sleeping. this will give you the needed time to escape.
- Smoke Alarm Maintenance: Test your smoke alarms once a month (by pushing the test button), change the battery once a year (or when it chirps), and change out your smoke alarms at the end of their service life (10 years) - very important as the older the smoke alarms, the longer they take to activate. In general you have 3 minutes to exit your home once the smoke alarm activates before your primary escape routes are blocked by smoke.
Smoke alarms detect and alert people to a fire in the early stages. Smoke alarms can mean the difference between life and death in a fire - working smoke alarms cut the risk of dying in a home fire in half.