MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
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Without wanting to stir controversy, the only time people die in fires is when smoke alarms are not fitted or are not working. To paraphrase an outgoing fire chief, "[I have] never known people to die in a fire where working smoke alarms were installed."
Pull your fingers out, check your damned alarms, and if they're not working, fix them. The fire brigade will install them for free on request.
If something happens you do not want to bear partial responsibility for someone's death because you nicked the batteries from the alarm for the remote control.
Make sure your alarms are 75dB minimum at your pillow. That's where they'll find you most likely.
Have a plan A for getting out, and a plan B too. Do your kids know where to go? Can they find their way out if you don't come?
From a very real expereience where a neighbour disabled his smoke alarm, taking the battery out, and his chip pan caught fire while he slept, resulted in me busting his front door and dragging him out, the appartment was seriously smoke and fire damaged, he had also wedged open the kitchen fire door, that would have saved a lotof the damage.
Always press the button once a week.
OH and finally it may be a good idea to fit one near the electric meter as a few homes have had a fire start there.
Most fire and rescue services fit them free now.
Without wanting to stir controversy, the only time people die in fires is when smoke alarms are not fitted or are not working. To paraphrase an outgoing fire chief, "[I have] never known people to die in a fire where working smoke alarms were installed."
I have. 😥
Yes call your local fire service to arrange a free HFSV, where the boys n girls will give you some advice and fit a new smoke alarm with a 10yr sealed battery in it.
And remember to check it once a week.
Call me paranoid, but I have 10 alarms in my 3 bed house. 😳
Likewise for Carbon Monoxide alarms.
I'm a bit paranoid about smoke alarms, and regularly check them. Recently I had to dispose of three old ones, so took them to the local recycling facility. I asked where to put them and was told in the plastics. I pointed out that they were electronic and also radioactive. So I was told to put them in the general waste instead. In the end I put them in the WEEE, hoping that somebody with a bit of sense/ experience at the next stage in the chain will know what to do with them.