Articles Posted in Resources

An article written for the Associated Press this past week covered a topic that every head of a household should know something about: A regulation calling for homes built after January 1, 2011 to install fire sprinklers.

This rule in some areas has ignited a fight around the country between fire safety officials, who say home fire sprinklers save lives, and home builders who are struggling to recover from the real-estate crash. Many of the builders contend that sprinkler installations should be voluntary, meaning it’s up to the home buyer.

The International Code Council, an organization of building inspectors, fire officials and others who set building standards, recommended in 2009 that states and municipalities adopt codes requiring sprinkler systems in homes and town houses less than three stories high. These regulations took effect this past January.

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.