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Consumer Online: Smoke detector? Yeah, right2-Aug-2006 Jeanna Rodgers can thank her five-year-old son Samuel for saving the lives of the whole family. Three ionisation smoke alarms failed to warn them that their house was full of smoke.
As soon as Jeanna got out of bed, she realised the house was full of acrid smoke, so she got her family safely out of the house. The three so-called smoke alarms they had installed were silent. The fire brigade quickly established the source of the smoke and - as they were investigating - the dryer burst into flames. Fortunately little damage was done. Even more fortunately, thanks to Samuel's coughing, Jeanna and her family had narrowly avoided what could well have been a tragedy. "We were just so lucky", she said. After the fire was put out, the fire brigade "tested" the smoke alarms by pressing the test button. They all sounded. The local fire chief was at a loss to explain why the alarms hadn't gone off. Why didn't the alarms work?As our June test of smoke alarms showed, most ionisation alarms don't respond quickly to smoke from smouldering materials. The alarm model Jeanna had installed was well down our performance table. This incident shows just how important it is for houses to be fitted with good-quality photo-electric smoke alarms. Their "early warning" of toxic smoke gives you time to escape. Jeanna has now installed our recommended photo-electric alarms in her house. -- Join Consumer Online for direct inform about product recalls -- http://www.consumer.org.nz
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When
a clothes dryer failed and started smoking in the early hours of a June morning,
Jeanna was woken by five-year-old Samuel who was sleeping on a top bunk. Samuel
started coughing and had a sore throat.