Neeta Lind / CC
March 11, 2023 – Daylight saving time serves as a reminder to ensure you have working smoke/CO alarms in your home and review fire-safety plans, says the office of the Illinois State Fire Marshal.
The ISFM reminds you to test, inspect, and replace broken or expired smoke/CO alarms in your homes with new 10-year sealed battery alarms as you change the clocks this weekend. Also, if you still have functional alarms with removable batteries, now is good time to change those batteries. An Illinois law that took effect on January 1, 2023, now requires ten-year sealed smoke alarms be installed in all homes built before 1988 or that do not have hardwired smoke detectors.
“Synthetic materials used in modern home construction causes homes to burn faster and hotter while producing toxic fumes limiting escape times to 3 minutes or less. This makes it vital for residents to ensure they have working smoke alarms in their homes while maintaining a fire escape plan that takes everyone’s needs into account and practice that plan,” said Illinois State Fire Marshal James A. Rivera.
The time change serves as a bi-annual reminder to test all smoke and CO alarms in your home. If you find an alarm that is not working or is expired, replace the alarm immediately with a new 10-year sealed battery alarm. Review your fire-escape plan with your family and hold a drill to practice your plan.
The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) reports between 2014-2018, almost three out of every five home fire deaths in the U.S. resulted from fires in homes with no smoke alarms or non-working smoke alarms. The chances of dying in a home fire was reduced by 55% in homes were working smoke alarms are present. In fires in which the smoke alarms were present but did not operate, more than two of every five of the smoke alarms had missing or disconnected batteries. Dead batteries accounted for 25% of smoke alarm failures.
