Fire safety experts and government officials met at the Macomb County Fire Department recently to raise awareness of an update to the Illinois Smoke Detector Act requiring new smoke detectors with 10-year batteries.
Last year, approximately 70% of the 91 residential fire deaths in Illinois happened in homes with no functioning smoke detectors, according to the Illinois Fire Safety Alliance and Illinois Firefighters Association Government Affairs Director Margaret Vaughn.
“Residential smoke detectors are not a new requirement,” state Rep. Norine Hammond (R-Macomb) said in a news release. “Since 1988, the Illinois Smoke Detector Act has required all dwellings to have smoke detectors, the new requirement just updates that law to reflect the changes in new technology, aimed at saving lives, while making it easier and more cost effective for Illinois residents to comply.
The new law, which Hammond helped pass, requires all residents, including those with working smoke detectors operating on removable batteries, to make the switch by 2022. The new 10-year model costs approximately $20 and has a 15-minute silencer button to encourage people not to deactivate alarms while cooking.
“Nothing is more heartbreaking than to respond to a fatal fire and find non-working smoke detectors in the home,” Macomb Fire Chief Rick Driskell said. “While the number of fire deaths may have decreased in the past few decades, you are more likely to die in a residential fire than you were years ago. This is because the majority of these deaths are caused by smoke inhalation and not burns, which is why escape time so critical. The toxic gases that are emitted from the synthetic material in modern homes (as opposed to the more natural woods and fibers that were used in the past) contribute to this problem and flashover is occurring in as little as three minutes as opposed to almost 30 minutes a generation ago.”
Fire safety equipment company First Alert is donating smoke alarms to the community through the Macomb County Fire Department.
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