Time to Check Your Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Detectors

Jack Eves: [00:00:00] X101 Always Classic Jack here in the studio, and joining me again in the studio are the Chiefs of the Cortlandville, city of Corland and Homer Fire Departments, Mike Viviano, Wayne Friedman, and Jay Riley. Guys, always good to see how you guys doing today.

Mike Biviano: Great, Jack, thanks for having us here.

Wayne Friedman: We appreciate you and everything you do for the community.

Thank you.

Jack Eves: Of course. Yeah. Always great to see you. And you know, daylight savings just happened. And you know, a big reminder everyone has to keep in mind is those smoke detectors, right.

Jay Riley: That’s right we were, uh, a little day late on ’em, but it was, uh, happened on the eighth Sunday. So hopefully a reminder to change your clocks, uh, smoke detector batteries as well as test them this weekend.

And if not, here’s your reminder and be sure to check your detectors and change your batteries.

Jack Eves: Yeah, cause it’s quite important to have those working smoke detectors, especially, you know, in the hallways right outside your bedrooms. Obviously and you know, uh, besides smoke detectors, also those carbon monoxide alarms, right?

Mike Biviano: Yeah, the carbon monoxide. Um, and there’s a lot of detectors now that are a combination, both smoke and, uh, carbon monoxide. So we [00:01:00] strongly encourage that as well. Um, we see a lot of carbon monoxide issues. Um, uh unfortunately, and it’s a odorless gas, um, and at the end of the winter season, um, there still can be the problems with furnaces and ventilation and all that.

So having that co detector also is, uh, is critically important to the safety, uh, of your family.

Jack Eves: Very true. And you know, also a good thing to keep in mind too is when you’re checking your smoke and carbon monoxide detectors is to make sure they’re still good cause usually some of them only last for, I think it’s up to 10 years that’s right ?

Wayne Friedman: Yeah. The ones that we, uh, recommend have a 10 year sealed battery. Uh, after 10 years, they recommend to throw ’em out the battery, um, will start to fail or other components of the detector, if you flip the detectors over, a lot of ’em are gonna tell you what each beep means. Um, as well as on the level of the co detection, how many parts per million, uh, the co reading can be [00:02:00] before it starts going off.

Some of them are 75 parts per million, and they have to be sustained at a certain amount of time before the detector will go off. So we have found that we recommend a lower parts per million because of the, um the health issues that it can cause for, uh, small children and animals uh, cause they’ll start to feel the effects beforehand.

So it’s good to check the back of the detector, see the date, the born date, uh, what the beeps mean, and things like your parts per million or what, what everything like that means.

Jack Eves: And besides having these located in the hallways, outside your bedrooms. Another good place to have one too is probably next to your furnace in, uh, probably the basement as well right ?

Jay Riley: Right. Outside. Outside your, uh. Laundry rooms, your furnace rooms. One spot you really don’t want to have them is in the garage. We find some people that put ’em in the garages. You know, you pulling with your car, let the car run it trips your smoke detector, trips, your carbon monoxide detector. So that’s not always a great spot, but just inside your garage, um, [00:03:00] hallways, it doesn’t hurt to have too many.

Too many is better than not enough.

Jack Eves: All right, awesome. Is there anything else you guys want to add ?

Mike Biviano: The only thing I would add is especially with either smoke, uh, if, if the smoke alarm goes off, just call 9 1 1 and have the fire department come. Uh, we often get told that the smoke detector’s been going off for a while.

We don’t think there’s a problem. Um, and you know, people will try to remedy the problem or look for it. The best thing is just call 9 1 1. Let the fire department come. Give the information to the dispatcher, though that says, Hey, my smoke detector’s been going off. I don’t know why it’s not acting right.

They’ll pass that on to the fire department so that you know, the chiefs or the officers that are going to make a decision on how they respond to it. But we’d much rather be dispatched, come look at it and find out there’s a problem with a detector versus a problem or, or a real fire issue and carbon monoxide’s the same thing.

Never, never mess with [00:04:00] that. Uh, the detector may malfunction. Um, with age there may be a problem, but, um, we can come and we’d much rather come check the house, find nothing. Than to let it go, thinking it’s okay that nobody wants to bother the fire department in the middle of the night. We’d much rather come and check it and make sure everybody’s okay and find a faulty detector than, uh, find a problem.

Jack Eves: Definitely better safe then sorry guys. Always appreciate you coming in and making sure that, again, daylight savings is always a good time to check your smoke detectors and your carbon monoxide detectors. Chiefs, thank you so much for coming in.

Mike Biviano: Thank you.

Jack Eves: For X101, I’m Jack Eves.