subject: To Survive A Fire Today Requires New Thinking, And A Lot Quicker Action Plan [print this page] A fire is a fire right? What could be different in home fires now? It is not just about the quality of the smoke detectors that we use. It is the materials we have filled our homes with and the way we have made our homes more energy efficient that has created a whole new fire problem that requires a whole new way of thinking if we want to be sure to escape. Our home safety and our very survival depends on it!
30 years ago, the experts estimated that we had 17 minutes on average to escape our home safely from the time a fire started. Today, according to the National Fire Protection Association, we have 1-2 minutes. WOW! What happened?
Two major changes have taken place. We know that fire requires oxygen to burn and humans require oxygen to breath. Since we have sealed our homes up as tight as we can to preserve energy and lower our heating and air conditioning bills, we have created an environment where there is simply less oxygen available to breath. When a fire starts and we are battling for who gets the oxygen, the fire will always win. As the fire burns and begins to take the oxygen away from the sleeping occupants in the home, it begins to put us into a deeper and deeper sleep, making it less likely we will hear an alarm.
Also, the materials in our homes have changed dramatically. Try to find something in your home today that is natural. Almost everything is made from synthetics that burn faster and hotter than ever. And look at all the plastics we have filled our homes with. Plastic is a petroleum based product that also burns hot and fast. Nothing is natural anymore, and if we do have anything natural such as wood, we cover it with paint or varnish so now it is putting off tremendous amounts of toxic gasses as the fire burns.
Here is the conclusion from tests conducted by the NIST:
The most common type of smoke alarm, and the cheapest on the market, ionization alarms, do not always go off early enough to ensure escape from smoky, smoldering fires, according to a 2004 report by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Part of the reason for the late warning is that fires burn hotter and up to five times faster now than 30 years ago, largely because of the more flammable synthetic materials now found in upholstery and used in home construction, the 2004 report said.
So what does this mean? Common sense would conclude that if we have much less time than we did 30 years ago, we cannot use the same thinking, methods and technology that we did 30 years ago and expect to escape a burning home. And you can see the results of trying to do just that above. The ionization smoke alarms, which are the most common, were developed in the late 1960s and for all practical purposes have not changed, but fires have!
To combat the time problem we have today, we need to have an early warning. We need to know about any type of fire, whether flaming or smoldering and we must know about it while it is still contained in the room where it started. The days of installing a few detectors defensively and waiting for the fire to come to us are over. Too often that will not allow the needed time for escape.
We should consider going on the offense and take advantage of some of the technology that is available today in the form of the photoelectric technology that can quickly sense a smoldering fire without giving you false alarms. And be careful about buying just any photoelectric detector as they are NOT all created equal. There are many new functions available to make these detectors long-lasting and carry as much as 20-year warranties, such as removable, cleanable smoke chambers, self-diagnostics, 10-year batteries, military-specification hardware, automatic drift compensation, etc.
When these types of smoke detectors are used in conjunction with modern heat detection that is totally self-contained, requiring no maintenance at all, you have complete protection that will give you an early warning to any type of fire that starts in any room of your home, and requires little maintenance.
And that is what we all want: peace of mind knowing we have time to escape a fire!
