Change your clocks, change your smoke detector batteries

TOWN OF TONAWANDA, N.Y. (WIVB) – Many people lost an hour of sleep as Daylight Saving Time took effect early Sunday morning, but with that comes a good reminder to change the batteries in our smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors.

It’s a simple chore that you should take care of twice a year. It could save your life.

“Seconds count,” said Ryan Schneggenburger, a captain with the Kenilworth Fire Department.

The seconds of early warning a working smoke detector can give you can mean the difference between life and death if there’s a fire, so everyone is urged to take a few seconds this time of year to make sure that critical piece of safety equipment is in good working order. “That saves lives. You never know what could happen,” Captain Schneggenburger said.

The worst does happen, too often. Just back in January, for example, a Niagara Falls man was killed in a house fire on 74th Street. We’re told there were no working smoke detectors in the home.

According to the Firemen’s Association of the State of New York, three of every five fire fatalities happen in houses without working smoke detectors.

Very often, in those cases, batteries have been removed from the smoke detectors in the home. “Make sure you replace them, because in a case of a fire, you’ll never know if there’s a fire until it’s too late,” said Ryan Smith, the fire prevention lieutenant for the Kenilworth Fire Department.

Changes to state law should soon make it harder to disable smoke detectors. Governor Cuomo has signed legislation that will phase out the sales of traditional smoke detectors with removable batteries in favor of newer tamper-proof detectors with sealed lithium batteries, which are designed to last a full decade. “If you get those detectors, you’ll have to change them every ten years,” Smith explained.

Whichever kind of detectors you have, you are still advised to test them every month. That goes not just for smoke detectors, but for carbon monoxide detectors, too.

Firefighters say that could be huge, especially now, with so many people running generators in the wake of Wednesday’s wind storm.

A carbon monoxide detector could alert you to the colorless, odorless toxic gas if something were to go wrong. “Especially when you’re running generators, you do not want to put them inside. Make sure they’re outside away from your windows and doors so the fumes don’t come back inside the house,” Captain Schneggenburger advised.

Whether it’s a carbon monoxide emergency or a fire, working detectors could give you and your family precious time to make it outside safely.

Fire officials say it’s critical every family has an escape plan that they practice regularly. “Pick a tree outside the house, a neighbors house, have them know the number to call and meet up there so that way, when the fire department gets there, we can account for everybody,” Smith explained.