Close call for Southland family a warning for all

Jeanna from Lumsdon is emailing all her family and friends after a "near thing" - right amid the weather problems and all. Her warning regards inadequate smoke alarms. She wrote:

I guess Heaven just aint ready for me yet ;-)

Last Friday night I went to bed as usual little knowing what excitement would occur during the night!

I was woken around 3:30 on Saturday morning by [young son] Samuel and got up to find the house filled with smoke.  Checked, found no flames, rang 111, bundled up the kids, turned off the power and headed out in the snow to wait for the fire engine. Drier had been going earlier in evening but was off and turned off at the wall.

They donned breathing apparatus and quickly found the source - the towels in the drier were smouldering.  Pulled it down to get it out the door and it burst into flame and so the floor was damaged but that was all!

Another 30 minutes and we would have been dead in our beds.  Earl [husband] was in Dunedin at a band gig and mum and dad still on holiday so they wouldn't have had a pleasant scene to return to.

No smoke alarms went off !!!!! 

Big article about them in Consumer and ours are bottom of the pile so we now have photoelectric ones to put up.  The ionisation models don't perform well with smouldering fires and ours didn't do well in both types of fire.  You wonder why they stock the other ones at all!  The Fire Chief couldn't believe they didn't go off considering the amount of smoke in the house.  Thank God that Samuel was in the top bunk!  He thought Momma was also watching over us.

If you have access to a consumer magazine [*1] then check out the article.  If not and you aren't sure what your smoke detector is then find out from your fire brigade.  They say that anything is better than nothing but the fumes would have got us before the smoke detectors went off.

What might have been is scary!  I am being vocal about it (when am I not?!) because this is something everyone needs to know.  "First Alert" are the ones Consumer recommends and they cost us $40 - a small price to pay for your life!

Kia Kaha (forever strong)

Jeanna

[*1] -- For the benefit of anyone not already subscribed -- to join Consumer Online for direct inform about product recalls --  http://www.consumer.org.nz

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