What does fire safety sound like?
A smoke alarm,
firefighters rushing to the scene, or perhaps
♪ I'm Sparky the fire dog ♪
♪ Sparky the fire dog ♪
♪ And I need your help ♪
♪ So let's all do our part ♪
♪ If you give Sparky a helping hand ♪
♪ We'll work together ♪
♪ And we'll never give a fire a place to start ♪
This week is Fire Prevention Week,
a campaign going back almost 100 years,
thanks to the National Fire Protection Association.
Every year, the organization works
with local fire departments and school systems
to promote fire-prevention awareness.
And this year's theme is all about
the sounds of fire safety.
To learn more about this hot topic,
we went straight to the source at the NFPA.
I'm Andrea Vastis.
I am the Senior Director of Public Education
with the National Fire Protection Association.
My team is all things fire prevention, hazard prevention.
Andrea and I talked about everything
from chirping smoke alarms,
fire safety for the hearing impaired,
and fire prevention myths.
We covered a lot of ground in our conversation.
So subscribe to catch part two
of this interview later this month,
when we'll be talking about winter and holiday fire safety.
Let's start with the basics.
What is the NFPA and what is Fire Prevention Week?
A lot of people don't know the
National Fire Protection Association.
People in the industry know us as the codes, the standards,
the national electrical code,
and then there's Fire Prevention Week and Sparky,
which is an opportunity for people
to learn a little bit more about what they can do
to stay safe in their own homes,
how they can take their own action.
So every year for 99 years,
we're in our 99th year for Fire Prevention Week,
at the beginning of October,
we celebrate Fire Prevention Week.
This year's theme is Learn The Sounds Of Fire Safety,
and it's all about what are the sounds
that your smoking carbon monoxide alarms are making,
and what does that mean?
What kind of action do you need to take?
This week, kids across the country
will be gathering to learn about smoke alarm sounds,
what they mean, and how to keep
these crucial devices running smoothly.
What was really interesting was
how the pandemic lended a hand to this theme.
The year, with the last year
of remote learning and remote work,
we actually got a lot of reports
of teachers hearing the chirp of the low battery
of a smoke alarm in the background.
And they would reach out to their local Fire Department
and say, "This is going on.
What does it mean?"
And the Fire Department would say,
"That means either the battery needs changing
or the alarm needs changing."
They'd reach out to the parents and say,
"This is what's going on."
And the next day, the teacher would not hear the chirp
and say to the child,
"Great, I don't hear the chirp anymore."
And too often, the answer was,
"Yes, we took the smoke alarm down."
And we realized that is
such a dangerous thing to do,
but we know it's such a common thing that happens.
When we don't realize what's going on with our alarm,
we get frustrated and we just take it down.
So the campaign,
which really runs all month long in October,
is all about what does it mean?
The three beeps of a smoke alarm,
the four beeps have a carbon monoxide alarm and the chirp,
meaning that it's time for a battery change
or time for a new alarm.
From what Andrea told me,
people aren't taking the sounds of fire safety seriously.
And it's easy to understand why.
Fires just aren't as common anymore.
Thanks to codes, updated standards
and safety efforts like Fire Prevention Week,
home fires happen less frequently than they used to.
The NFPA reported a steady decrease in home structure fires
in the last 40 years,
going from over 740,000 in 1980
to 339,000 in 2019,
which is good news.
But as Andrea put it,
That decrease in home fires has meant that
it's not top of mind anymore.
And so that is one of the hard parts about it
in terms of fewer home fires,
but they are burning faster, hotter, and deadlier.
So this is the world that we find ourselves in.
It's less common to have it,
but it's going to be more serious when it happens,
which is why it's even more important to prevent it.
In three out of five home fire deaths,
there was either no smoke alarm or no working smoke alarm.
So while you're less likely to have a house fire,
your escape time is dramatically decreased
if one does occur,
and that's why having an early warning system
is so important.
This year's campaign focuses on the sounds
that come from your smoke and carbon monoxide detectors.
The chirp means that there is a battery is end of life
or that the unit itself is end of life.
Oh, okay.
Any smoke or CO alarm that's over 10 years old,
no matter what, it's time to replace it.
So they have a user life of 10 years.
It's really important that you get rid of it at that point.
So if it's under 10 years old and it's chirping,
it's time to change the battery.
If you change the battery and it's still chirping,
that means that unit is no longer working.
Basically, when you hear the chirp, check the battery.
If it's still going after that,
or the device is older than 10 years,
you'll need a new one.
But, most importantly, for the love of all that is good,
do not remove the batteries.
So take a look at your smoke detector right now.
It's okay, I can wait.
Is it over 10 years old?
That's okay, I won't judge.
If so, it's just time to get a new one.
The best case scenario is that you get a combined unit,
one that is both for smoke and carbon monoxide
and that you interconnect them.
And that means that they are working in unison.
They have hardwired and wireless versions of this.
And so one in every bedroom or sleeping area.
If your den is the place
where somebody takes a nap or sleeps,
you put one in there.
So in every bedroom or sleeping area.
Outside of the sleeping areas,
so that means the hallways.
And making sure there's one on every level.
There are tons of options out there,
and they all meet Andrea's criteria.
But as far as features or specific brands go, she says,
it doesn't really matter.
No stance on which one to use.
The point is that you use it.
So it's not doing any good in the box.
That's what it boils down to.
So it doesn't matter, high tech, low tech.
You can check out SafeWise
for a list of our recommendations.
But once you do get that new unit,
you'll still need to test it once a month,
or as Andrea calls it, smoke alarm Saturday.
Test it once a month.
We like to say, smoke alarm Saturday.
Take the first Saturday of the month. Make it your test.
Just push the button; test it.
It'll run through the test,
and you'll know that it's working.
Sweet music.
Just another note in the fire safe symphony.
While talking about the sounds of fire safety,
it's also important to mention the options
for those who are deaf or hearing impaired.
Other things that people need
to understand about smoke alarms,
and this is really about smoke alarms and escape planning.
There needs to be a plan for everyone in the home,
regardless of their abilities.
So, whether there is someone in the home who is deaf
or hard of hearing,
it is really critical to make sure that you have
the devices that work with your smoke and CO alarms.
That's things like strobe lights,
bed shakers, pillow shakers.
Someone has cochlear implants,
they're taking them out at night
when they're going to sleep,
they're not going to hear that sound of the alarm.
So having the bedside device that flashes a light
and shakes the bed is critical.
It actually is really good for people
who are very deep sleepers as well.
And it's important just to keep things bedside, right?
Your glasses, your cell phone, your walker, your cane,
all those things should be bedside
so that if something happens in the middle of the night,
and again, you have maybe two minutes to get out,
it's critical that you have access to your devices.
With little time to escape a house fire,
everyone deserves to hear the sounds of fire safety.
To close out our conversation,
I had one more question for Andrea.
Do you have any fire-prevention myths
you might wanna debunk
or any flim flam or anything that might hear myths
that people always say, like do this, and it doesn't work?
Anything like that?
Please don't throw baking soda on a grease fire.
No, no, no.
That's an old one that people used to talk about doing that.
Again, that's where you need the heavy lid,
the slide, the sheet pan over.
Please don't think that you will wake up
to the smell of smoke; you won't.
It's really critical that you understand that
that's what the smoke alarm is there for,
because fire is fast,
because the smoke alarm will alert you
at the very beginning,
and you don't have as much time to get out
as you think you do.
So those are important things to know.
Please don't assume that everybody knows
the way out of the house.
And so that's why home fire-escape planning
is so critical.
On our website, on FirePreventionWeek.org,
you can find home fire escape planning
that you can do with your family.
And you get to map out the ways out of the room,
create your meeting place.
You make sure everybody knows what to do.
Stuff can be replaced, and you can't, right?
So take that time.
You get your car serviced,
you get your car's oil changed;
clean your chimney,
check your home heating equipment once a year,
have it inspected.
Again, make sure everything is working properly.
Carbon monoxide is odorless; it's colorless.
It overtakes people and makes them sleepy
and unfortunately can kill and kills people.
It's not anything you know.
That's why you need the detector in your home.
Hopefully you're feeling inspired
to test your smoke alarms
or at least change the batteries.
During Fire Prevention Week, a school will do
some kind of assembly or a classroom activity.
Kids will come home;
they'll do their home fire escape plan;
they'll test their smoke alarms.
And then we are hearing when things happen,
these are the saves.
These are the saves because they knew what to do.
If you have kids or wanna get involved
with Fire Prevention Week,
Andrea has a few places you can go.
What I say is just go to FirePreventionWeek.org,
because there you'll find the tip sheet.
There, you'll find a family action plan
that you can download,
which tells you everything you need to know
about your alarms, making an escape plan.
Those are all the kinds of things
that people need to have in place, an escape plan.
So it's alarms, it's escape plan,
a meeting place outside,
everybody aware of their exits and where they can go.
We've linked to all those sites in the description below.
Check those out if you wanna see those.
Big thanks to you for watching,
and another big thanks to Andrea Vastis of the NFPA
for talking to us.
We've got more from this interview
coming later on this month,
covering winter and holiday fire safety.
So like, subscribe, and check that out soon.
Don't forget to test your smoke alarms, and stay safe.
(upbeat music)