Madison Fire Department aims to get smoke detectors in every home
Glassman said the department has seen more fires recently, which lead him to start a program to educate people about smoke detectors and fire safety.
Smoke detectors cost about $20 dollars and, according to Glassman, can save lives if installed in the proper place, as smoke inhalation is often the cause of death in a fire.
He said he has seen many examples where people neglect getting a smoke detector or they may have one, but it does not work.
Smoke detectors should be replaced about every 10 years, not because of the battery going dead, but because the components used to detect smoke and fire can wear out.
In some cases the owners of the smoke detector simply take the battery out and forgets to put in a new one. Glassman said that out of the total number of fatal fires nationwide, only 37 percent of those fires had a working smoke detector.
Now, many smoke detectors have sealed batteries that can not be replaced, but they have a life expectancy of around 10 years.
Glassman suggest you should test your detector once every two weeks. In most cases all you have to do to test a smoke detector is press a button and listen for a beep. Also, he said occasionally you should clean the detector.
Another problem Glassman said was most children do not respond to a smoke detector when it alarms.
“About 40 percent of children do not hear them,” Glassman said. “They can sleep through them.”
This is a concern for firefighters because of the number of house fires that occur at night when people are asleep. Glassman also said during a test, a smoke alarm was activated right next to a sleeping child, and instead of waking up the child just rolled over and put his head under the pillow.
“Kids just sleep very heavily. People need to test [the alarm] with their children.”
Glassman has already installed close to 50 alarms already and he is able to give away some alarms for free if a resident cannot afford one.
The fire department also offers free fire inspections to any resident of the City of Madison, along with some other programs as well.
“I don’t want people to be bashful and call us. Call us if you have a fire concern in your house,” Glassman said. “We need to make sure people use us for their safety.”
He also said that if he was unavailable to do a fire inspection then the department would send a whole engine company out to take a look at a house at no charge.
Another program offered is a fire extinguisher training program like the one Glassman did for the bus drivers of Spirit Coach, a charter bus company in Madison.
During the program, he taught the drivers how to use a fire extinguisher and what to do if a fire gets out of control on a bus.
Even though most of the drivers had 15 to 45 years of experience driving busses only a handful of them had ever had to use a fire extinguisher before.
