A SIMPLE QUESTION...

...DO YOU HAVE A "WORKING" SMOKE DETECTOR?

Chief Robert Walker of the Wellington Fire District said the fire that ripped through the Wheeling Street home Thursday morning could have easily killed the homeowner. “There are a couple key points about this fire; there was no drywall in that back room, all open wall studs which is why the fire spread so rapidly, there was no protection for the walls. It spread from the drier fire up through the ceiling, burnt the floor rafters off, spread then went up into the attic. By the time we got there we had an attic fire too. We also discovered that there were no smoke detectors in the home.”

Chief Walker said that even with all the campaigns that local Fire Departments do to encourage people to have working smoke detectors, key word being “working”, people still either don’t have one or the ones they do have don’t work. “Nationally the statistic is that of the smoke detectors that are hanging inside homes across the United States, 80% of them do not work. They either have a dead battery or no battery at all. Some people still believe that this type of situation will never happen to them in their home. One or two smoke detectors in the home can really make a difference in survival.”

The fire spread quickly and the thick smoke had banked off the ceiling and was headed down to floor level. By the time the homeowner’s had dog alerted her to the blaze the smoke was just 2 feet off the ground. With her asleep on the couch she was right about level with the smoke at that time. When asked how much time she had left at that point Chief Walker responded; “Minutes, a few minutes before she would have gone unconscious from the Carbon Monoxide. The Carbon Monoxide would have put her into an unconscious state and she would have died.”