House Fires-PLEASE READ

Received from a friend who is in the property Insurance business. It is
well worth reading.

 

This is One of those emails that if you didn't send
it, rest assured someone on your list will suffer for not reading it.

The original message was written by a lady whose brother and his wife
learned a hard lesson this past week.

Their house burned down.. ..nothing left but ashes. They have good
insurance so the house will be replaced and most of the contents. That
is the good news. However, they were sick when they found out the cause
of the fire. The insurance investigator sifted through the ashes for
several hours. He had the cause of the fire traced to the master
bathroom. He asked her sister-in-law What she had plugged in the
bathroom. She listed the normal things....curling iron, blow dryer. He
kept saying to her, "No, this would be something that would disintegrate
at high temperatures". Then her sister-in-law remembered she had a Glade
Plug-In , in the bathroom.
The investigator had one of those "Aha" moments. He said that was the
cause of the fire. He said he has seen more house fires started with the
plug-in type room fresheners than anything else. He said the plastic
they are made from is THIN plastic. He also said that in every case
there was nothing left to prove that it even existed.
When the investigator looked in the wall plug, the two prongs left from
the plug-in were still in there. Her sister-in-law had one of the
plug-ins that had a small night light built in it. She said she had
noticed that the light would dim and then finally go out. She would walk
into the bathroom a few hours later, and the light would be back on
again. The investigator said that the unit was getting too hot, and
would dim and go out rather than just blow the light bulb. Once it
cooled down it would come back on.
That is a warning sign . The investigator said he personally wouldn't
have any type of plug in fragrance device anywhere in his house. He has
seen too many places that have been burned down due to them.
PLEASE PASS THIS ON TO ALL THE PEOPLE IN YOUR ADDRESS BOOK .
NOT ONLY COULD IT SAVE SOMEONE'S HOUSE, BUT IT COULD SAVE SOMEONE'S
LIFE

Postcode lottery of school fire safety

 

Only 43% of Scotland's primary schools are fitted with life-saving smoke or heat detection systems.

The anomaly has arisen because the 32 local authorities responsible for fire safety in schools interpret the law on health and safety differently.

The figures have shocked parents and firefighters, who have called for urgent action to ensure that all primary schools are brought up to standard.

The vast majority of schools rely on "smash-the-glass" manual alarms, which mean people must spot a fire. Some small rural schools do not even have that, relying on a hand bell or a shout from the teacher.

"It appears some local authorities are treating it with the seriousness it deserves. Others are taking a chance. If they are taking a chance with children that is unacceptable.

"There is a responsibility through the fire act for owners to ensure there is proper fire safety prevention."

New schools have to have smoke- heat detection systems to comply with building regulations.

"Local authorities may see it as costly but they have a moral duty and duty of care to the children in these schools."

PSC say. "Smoke alarms are a commonsense precaution against fire, which doesn't happen often but can have a devastating effect. In the event of a fire, it is generally smoke that kills, not flames.

"To detect smoke you would have to be exposed to it, so it's clearly far superior to have a mechanical method of detection that can pick it up at the earliest possible stage, rather than placing people in danger.

"Fighting the fire comes secondary. Buildings and equipment are replaceable but loss of life would be catastrophic.

"Smoke detectors will identify smoke at a level before people notice it. This gives more opportunity for evacuation of the premises, than leaving the fire authorities to tackle any evident fire."

However, not all local authorities have taken this view.

"There is no requirement for life safety in most cases for smoke detection systems to be fitted in schools," a spokeswoman said.

The Arson Prevention Bureau (APB), established by the Home Office and Association of British Insurers, said the key issue for local authorities was money and called for councils to do more to protect schools and children.

The latest APB figures show there are, on average, 20 fire-raising attacks on British schools each week, with Strathclyde and Greater Manchester suffering most.

"There has been an increase in day-time fires," said a spokesman. "That has clear implications for safety."

Eleanor Coner, of the Scottish Parent Teacher Council, accepted that there may be problems in installing automated systems in older buildings and added: "As usual we are giving mixed messages to children. They often have lessons about being safe in their homes and that it is very important to have a smoke detector and it is probably about time we looked at this."

The fire service said that 57% of the 1500 fires in schools in the UK in 2002 were started deliberately.

Almost half the accidental fires in schools were caused by faulty appliances, leads and fuel supplies. About 25% of school fires in 2002 started in a classroom or lecture room.

For any help or advice please email paul@pscfiresafety.com or give us a call 01455 557877.

 

please forward this to anyone who has a child

The Value of Vocal Smoke Detectors

Recent research has shown that children are in grave danger of sleeping through fire alarms.  When that shrill shrieking alarm begins to blare, most adults will find it impossible to sleep through the noise.  However, sleeping children do not always hear or respond to the beeping of smoke detectors, putting them at greater risk.

While we tend to rely upon our smoke detectors to wake us up during a fire, the fact is that smoke detectors do not always wake everyone.  Studies show that children are often likely to sleep through a fire alarm because their level of sleep is much deeper than that of adults. 

According to the U.S. Fire Administration, children (age 14 and younger) constitute 21% of residential fire fatalities and 14% of residential fire injuries.

Different Sleeping Patterns

The question that is important to answer is what are most children doing at the time of a fatal fire.  USFA again states that the largest percentage of child fire fatalities happened while the child was asleep. More than half of the 560 children who died in fires in 2002 were sleeping at the time of the tragedy.  

Several issues must be considered as to why the children never woke up.  All are directly related to smoke detectors.  Either there were no working smoke detectors in the house, or simply a lack of audible recognition to this safety device from the child. 

Recent studies have shown that in the case of children it is not always the problem that a smoke detector was not there or was not operational.  Instead, sleeping children did not always react properly to the alarm or even wake up.  The fact remains that children are more likely than adults to sleep through an alarm.  Dorothy Bruck's research established that as few as 6% of the children (ages 6-15) involved in her 1999 study were actually awakened by a smoke detector. While her study was performed in Australia, using Australian smoke detectors, recent U.S. studies have discovered the same.  Several U.S. news agencies began their own investigations which confirmed Bruck's study.

The reason behind inadequate sleeping-child response to smoke detectors rests partially in children's sleeping patterns.  According to doctors consulted in the various studies, children's level of deep sleep is longer and deeper than most adults, which makes it difficult to wake them. Part of the reason comes from the immaturity of a child's brain.  The deep sleep theory became clearer when researchers would move the alarms and place them directly above the children's heads and still get little or no response.  Bruck says that the percentage of responses rose, but response still was as low as 27% for children ages 6-10.

Emergency Response

The importance of immediate action when a fire breaks out is critical.  The difference between a one-minute response and a two-minute response may, in some cases, be the difference between life and death. 

In a test performed in Madison, Wisconsin, it took up to 4 minutes to wake the children with a standard alarm. In 2004, NBC Boston investigated a sleeping child's response to smoke detectors, and realized that the majority of the children they investigated would not wake up.  Those that did get out of bed failed to respond correctly to the emergency.  It is now understandable why over 50% of child fire fatalities occur while the child is sleeping.

Do not for a moment, however, think that smoke detectors are useless.  Since smoke detectors have become more widely used, the number of fire fatalities in general has decreased drastically.  This information simply means that new response programs will have to be designed based on child response.  Parents have to make certain that they know how their children will respond to a smoke detector.

The fact that children sleep through alarms also means that the old saying “first up, last out,” — the one who wakes up first goes about getting all others out of danger — must become part of a household's emergency procedures.  However, even here problems arise because the “first up” might not be able to reach the other members of the household.  What then?  Who will wake the children?

The answer is a vocal smoke alarm — one that emits the standard beeping as well as vocal warnings.  While screeching alarms may not wake up a sleeping child, vocal alerts may do the trick.  Studies show that children do respond more positively to human voice alerts than just to sounding alarms.  Part of the reason is that children do not hear the alarm or they are generally unfamiliar with the alarm and how to respond.  Because of this, they subconsciously ignore the siren.  Human voices, however, offer meaning to them, even when they sleep.  A simple vocal siren that says, “Get up.  There is a fire in the house.  Go outside,” is not only meaningful and wakes them up, but it also aids in keeping them calm and tells them what to do — a reminder of what went on in their fire drill.

While 66.7% of the children Bruck investigated responded to a standard alarm within a reasonable amount of time, 100% of the sleeping children (ages 6-10) responded within a minute to vocal alarms. 

In Hank's Investigation, the response was the same. The alarm was programmed with the parents voices calling their children by name and calmly telling them to get up and get out of the house. The children all responded within a minute to the vocal smoke alarms.

Our response to these studies should be to implement a more comprehensive fire safety plan for our homes, one that incorporates the needs of different family members.

For help or advice please visit our web site www.pscfiresafety.com or email us with your questions paul@pscfiresafety.com

---

Sources:

Bruck, Dorothy, Sharnie Reid, Jefoon Kouzma, and Michelle Ball.  “The  Effectiveness of Different Alarms in Waking Sleeping Children.” 

FEMA. “Residential Fires and Child Casualties.”  Topical Fire Research Series 5.2 (April 2005)  United States Fire Administration. 

Public/Private Fire Safety Council.  “Home Smoke Alarms and Other Fire Detection and Alarm Equipment.”  White Paper .  April 2006. 

“Smoke Alarms Won't Wake Most Children.” 1 May 2006.  Channel3000: WISCTV.COM.  

Ryan, Hank Phillippi.  “A Cause for Alarm.”  7News Boston.  9 February 2004. 

 

 

vocal detectors

The Signal One Vocal Smoke Alarm not only detects smoke, but it uses an innovative method to alert children. This Alarm supplements the high-pitched beeps of conventional alarms with spoken instructions recorded by parents or caregivers.

Conventional smoke alarms have two limitations. Firstly, they do not always awaken children. Secondly, they give no specific instructions about what to do. The Signal One Vocal Alarm's method of recording a parent's voice addresses both of these problems.

Studies have shown that a familiar voice is 99% effective in waking children, as opposed to the 57% effectiveness of a standard beeping alarm. And the Signal One Vocal Alarm is the only alarm that uses this method.

Winner of the 2003 Best of Innovations Award and the 2005 Housewares Design Award.

Features include:

• UL approved and CE listed
• Advanced photoelectric sensing technology
• 15 seconds of recording capacity for wake-up command and escape instructions
• Directional speaker aims your voice at their bed
• Fire drill feature allows you to easily practice your escape plan
• Tri-lingual instruction manual with escape planning tips
• Mounting bracket and hardware included
• 4 AA batteries included
• 5 year limited warranty

For more information on these detectors please email paul@pscfiresafety.com we will then send details.