It’s time to…Change Your Clock Change Your Batteries
Daylight savings time comes to an end this year on November 1st. When you change your clocks back one hour, use this extra hour to start a new tradition of also changing the batteries in all the smoke alarms in your home. It can save your life.
Warnings from smoke alarms can provide those critical extra seconds people need to get out of their homes safely. Even though 96% of American homes have at least one smoke alarm, 19% of those household detectors are not working, most due to missing or dead batteries.
Fire departments across the USA have joined forces with the International Association of Fire Chiefs and Energizer™ for the 22nd year of the Change Your Clock Change Your Battery campaign to encourage Americans to make sure their smoke and carbon monoxide alarms will work when they need them.
Use the hour you gain each year in the fall to:
- Test all the smoke alarms in your home by pushing the test button.
- Replace any batteries that have expired. Most smoke alarms use one nine-volt battery.
- Plan with your family two escape routes in the event of a fire and practice them.
- Prepare a fire safety kit that includes working flashlights and fresh batteries.
- Replace any smoke alarms that are ten or more years old with duel sensing alarm devices that are now more commonly available at retail stores. For best protection, it’s recommended that both ionization and photoelectric technologies be in homes. Ionization smoke detection is generally more responsive to flaming fires and photoelectric smoke detection is generally more responsive to fires that begin with a long period of smoldering.
Having working smoke alarms in your home is a simple and effective way to reduce your risk of dying in a home fire by nearly half. Considering that residential fire deaths peak in winter months, it makes sense to change your smoke and carbon monoxide alarm batteries each and every fall. On November 1st, 2009, change your clock and change your batteries!
Guest Author: Fire Marshal Alan Perkins, CFPS, Washington Township Fire Department, Dublin, Ohio. For more information, contact: Leslie Dybiec, Public Information Officer Phone: (614) 652-3928 Fax: (614) 766-2507 or ldybiec@wtwp.com.
Live Safe Foundation is an Ohio based non-profit organization (501c3), and leading grassroots movement, devoted to making fire safety education, awareness initiatives and life saving tools available on a broad basis to communities, campuses, and institutions in an effort to reduce national fire fatalities and fire losses.
