PSA Monday - Does your smoke alarm work?

There’s no doubt in my mind that my smoke alarm saved my life last February, and that of the neighbors downstairs that I was able to awaken.

I was so thrilled to finally have a new apartment 6 months later, that it never occurred to me to check the smoke alarms.  They’re supposed to work.  Right?  Yes, they’re supposed to, but sometimes in readying a apartment for a new tenant, things get over-looked.

I took some cold medicine Saturday afternoon which made me groggy enough to fall asleep on the couch.  I woke (cat loudly meowing) to an apartment filled with smoke,  I quickly got the chicken soup off the fire, covering my mouth with a kitchen towel, opened the back and balcony door, turned on the air conditioner and retired to the back porch landing with the cat, iphone and a cold beer.

It was there I realized what was wrong with this picture.  There are 2 smoke alarms in this apartment and neither of them went off.  They’re being replaced as I type. 

I would not have burned to death, the chicken would have slowly become ash in it’s deep pot, but the smoke may have sent me to a more permanent sleep.

So here’s my PSA:  Whenever you move into a new place, immediately test the smoke alarms and of course
When, you change your clocks; change your smoke alarm batteries. Working smoke alarms increase the chance of surviving a home fire by 50 percent.
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