From Bill Kaempffer, public safety spokesman:
In what is believed to an unprecedented effort to promote fire safety, the Bridgeport Fire Department installed its 40,000th free smoke detector Tuesday on Brooks Street.
The value of the project is well documented.
· Since the program began in 2005, there have been 142 confirmed incidents in which residents’ lives were potentially saved because people were alerted to a fire by a city-installed smoke detector.
· Since the program began, structure fires in the city have been reduced by 37.5 percent.
Josefa Guieterez, of 279 Brooks St., was the beneficiary of the 40,000th free smoke detector. The Mayor and Fire Department presented her with complimentary tickets for the upcoming Ringling Bros. & Barnum and Bailey Circus in Bridgeport. The tickets and goody bags for Guieterez’s grandchildren were donated by Ringling Bros. & Barnum and Bailey.
The Fire Department funds the Safe Asleep program, which costs about $165,000 annually.
“Whenever we formulate our budget and think to ourselves, ‘Can we afford to do this anymore?’ we come back to the same answer,” said Chief Fire Chief Brian Rooney. “We can’t afford not to do this.”
The effort has been dubbed Safe Asleep for a good reason. According to Chief Rooney, half of the fires in America happen between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. when many people are asleep. Without working smoke detectors, some of those people surely would have died in bed.
“It’s impossible to say how many deaths were prevented, but I can say this with certainty. There are people in Bridgeport who are still alive today because they called the fire department and asked us to install free smoke detectors in their homes.
“It only takes two or three breaths of smoke to render you unconscious, so seconds count.”
The program is unusual because the Fire Department, partnered with the Regional Youth Adult Social Action Partnership (RYASAP), will actually go to people’s houses and install free smoke detectors. RYASAP maintains a database of the date and location of every alarm installed.
“Bridgeport is a safe city and every day it is getting safer,” said Mayor Bill Finch.
The Fire Department and RYASAP conduct aggressive marketing campaigns for the Safe Asleep program, including door hangers, wrapped public-transit buses and school visits for fire prevention sessions.
“The key is reaching the children,” Mayor Finch added. “We want them to learn about fire safety in school, go home and ask their parents whether their smoke detectors work. If they don’t, the children even have a phone number to pass along so their parents can have free ones installed.”
Richard Minfield knows better than most. A city firefighter, he was awakened in his Brooks Street apartment by cries for help and the sound of activated spoke detectors. He exited his apartment and smelled smoke. He evacuated his family, and then proceeded to rescue a disoriented woman he located in the hallway. He escaped with the clothes on his back.
“I am my parents’ son. I am my siblings’ brother. I am my grandparents’ grandchild,” he said. “Were it not for smoke detectors, I would not be any of those things today.”
Afterwards, Mayor Finch went to ServPro, a fire and water damage restoration company, where the company owner was donating furniture and toys to one of the displaced families from the Brooks Street fire.
The items were recovered from fires but the original owners, usually because the items were replaced by insurance, didn’t want them. ServPro cleans, disinfects and delivers the items free of charge to other families displaced by fires.
“It is part of giving back,” said owner Joseph Pelli.
*** IT’S A GOOD PROGRAM! ***
40,000th Free Smoke Detector means nothing if they are the wrong ones.
touch.courant.com/#section/2224/article/p2p-77289572/
Kevin Hunt: Did Millions Of People Buy The Wrong Type Of Smoke Alarm?
Kevin Hunt – The Bottom Line
What type of smoke alarm do you have?
September 7, 2013
Smoke alarms save lives, but only if they’re the right alarms.
Ninety-six percent of the country’s homes have at least one smoke alarm, according to the National Fire Protection Association.
What kind do you have?
If it’s not photoelectric it’s the wrong kind, says Skip Walker, a home inspector from San Bruno, Calif., with a distinct day-night mission statement.
“I inspect by day,” he says, “and try to get photoelectric alarms mandated by night.”
Walker says that despite the installation of smoke alarms in more than 100 million homes in 30 years the chances of dying in a home fire have not changed much.
Consumers have three choices when buying smoke alarms: ionization, photoelectric and a device that combines the two technologies.
Most installed alarms, 90 percent, are ionization models best suited for detecting cooking fires and other fast-flame fires — fires that usually start when people are awake and can escape. Photoelectric alarms are more sensitive to smoldering fires in living rooms, bedrooms and kitchens, where heavy furniture, mattresses and synthetic countertops are more likely to burn slowly. These fires often start overnight, during sleep hours.
Smoldering fires, says Walker, account for only about 12 percent of fires but more than half of fire-related deaths and a third of fire-related injuries. Photoelectric alarms save lives, he says. Ionization alarms rarely save lives.
“National Institute of Standards and Technology data tells us ionization alarms respond, in their tests, on average 30 minutes slower than a photoelectric in a smoldering fire,” says Walker. “Thirty minutes.”
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, Maine and Iowa now require photoelectric alarms in homes. Connecticut’s fire code requires residential properties to have a smoke alarm in each sleeping area, one outside sleeping areas and one each level, including the basement, but does not specify the type.
“We really don’t do any recommending,” says William Abbott, the state’s fire marshal. “The code doesn’t differentiate between which alarm that you would need. So we just go by what the fire code tells us.”
So what type of alarm did Abbot install in his home?
“I have photoelectric in my house,” he says. “That’s what I ended up with.”
Towns and cities also have local ordinances. Stamford, for instance, adopted stricter regulations following the 2011 Christmas Day fire that killed three young girls and their grandparents in a home with no working alarms. The city now requires a smoke detector and carbon monoxide detector outside each sleeping area and a smoke detector in each room used for sleeping.
What type do you have? Most people probably don’t know. To identify an ionization alarm, look for a model number that includes the letter “I,” Americum-241 or any mention of radioactive material. A photoelectric alarm often identifies itself as “photoelectric” or perhaps with a capital “P” somewhere on the device.
If prone to frequent nuisance tripping, it’s almost certainly an ionization alarm. Kitchen or bathroom steam or a microwave can trigger an ionization alarm. After too many false alarms, homeowners often remove the battery, disabling the alarm.
“As soon as you have no functional alarm in a house, you double your chances of dying in a fire,” says Walker. “That’s where two-thirds of all deaths occur in fires — in homes where alarms aren’t functional.”
Walker says he became a photoelectric-alarm convert when Marc McGinn, the fire chief in nearby Albany — the first California city with an ordinance requiring photoelectric alarms — spoke to a group of home inspectors almost four years ago.
“I told him, ‘You’ve got our attention,” says Walker. “It’s just criminal is the best word I can use to describe the situation … His contention is that [ionization alarms] should be banned and recalled from the market. I would love that to happen.”
But it won’t, and Walker knows it.
“No one wants to admit they’re bad because of the legal liability,” he says. “If those things were recalled, the manufacturers would get sued into the Stone Ages. I’m talking 40,000 wrongful-death lawsuits and 200,000 serious-injury cases over the last 40 years. So what’s the liability for that?”
Aside from slow response to smoldering fires and nuisance tripping, ionization alarms also had a 20 percent failure rate in a 2007 Underwriters Laboratories study that included did-not-trigger results in seven of eight tests using synthetic materials.
A combination alarm, with ionization’s superior response to fast-flame fires and photoelectric’s superior response to smoldering fires, would seem a smart compromise. But Walker cautions that combos, too, are susceptible to nuisance tripping. The Bottom Line, after installing a combination alarm in small home-theater room, discovered that the television’s remote triggered the alarm. The only solution: removing the alarm’s battery.
Consumer Reports, in its most recent tests, rated the dual-sensor Kidde PI9000 as the top-performing alarm.
“We recommend smoke alarms with dual smoke sensors because each type has detection strengths,” says James McQueen, a Consumer Reports spokesman. “Admittedly, some detection might be more prone to false alarming in certain locations and for just those instances, a single detector-style alarm might be warranted.”
The Kidde alarm costs about $25. Walker says he bought two photoelectric alarms at Costco for $23.
The Bottom Line: A photoelectric alarm is your best chance to avoid death in a house fire. A combination alarm is acceptable, but only if you keep the battery in it. Ionization alarms are better than nothing.