Articles Posted in Fire Prevention and Safety

Researchers at Victoria University in Melbourne, Australia conducted a study among school-age children to see how effective a smoke detector was in waking them up in the event of fire. Unfortunately, the results were frightening, and a serious wake-up call for parents, firefighters, and to fire-safety educators alike.

The study, whose results were publicized recently in the industry journal Fire and Materials, asked the parents in 80 families to activate the smoke detector in their home after their children had been asleep between one and three hours. The 123 children who were in the study were divided into two groups, based on which children had reached puberty and which did not. The reason for this: Levels of the hormone melatonin, which helps induce sleep, go down once children reach puberty. So it would seem that younger children would be deeper into sleep, and perhaps less likely to be awakened by an alarm.

That proved to be true–but it did not mean that most of the older children heard the alarm, either. In fact,, 78 percent of all the kids that were studied slept through a smoke detector’s alarm that was blaring for at least 30 seconds. What’s more, parents reported that of the 22 percent of children who did wake up, only half of them identified the noise as a smoke detector, and just one-fourth of them even knew that a smoke detector’s noise means to get out of the house immediately. And while the younger kids were likeliest to sleep through the alarm (87 percent of them!), 56 percent of the 11- to 15-year-olds also slept through the piercing noise.

While we writers on this blog always try to give useful lessons on everything from preventing second- and third-degree burns, smoke inhalation, and other injuries that come from fires, hot liquids, hot surfaces, and even the sun, we sometimes come across other really good sources of information that we want to pass along to you.

For instance, I saw an article this week on www.SafetyAtHome.com about making your home safer not only by being more aware of fire hazards and possible obstacles to escape, but also by teaching your children about fire prevention and what they should do if a fire starts in the home without their parents’ knowledge.

This topic is especially relevant as the entire nation mourns the loss of 7 small children in a house fire in rural Pennsylvania this week. The children were in the house while the mother was in a nearby barn, milking cows. By the time one of the kids ran to get mom to tell her about the smell of smoke in the house, the mother was unable to get the other children out of the house because of the speed of the fire. It’s a truly terrible story.

Unfortunately, it seems that the month of February 2011 can be used by fire-prevention experts as a useful lesson in how human error and carelessness can bring devastating consequences, in the form of third-degree burns and smoke inhalation, from fires.

First, in New York City on February 24, candles used in a bedroom caused a fatal five-alarm fire after they tipped over and ignited bed sheets. The fire left an elderly woman dead and also injured 20 firefighters and three residents. The occupant of the apartment where the fire began had placed the candles on the floor around her bed. At some point, they tipped over, and a guest doused the flames with water.

But then the guest made a terrible mistake–he opened a window to clear the smoke from the room, which allowed fresh air to feed the fire again. The fire department said this actually created a “blowtorch effect” that whipped through the open window and pushed the fire all the way through the apartment. Then, as the occupants were fleeing through the apartment, they left the bedroom door and the front door open, which allowed the fire to spread all the way into the building’s hallway and quickly engulf the rest of the building.