The Bluffton Township Fire Department says that a smoke alarm saved a local family Monday evening.
Just before five yesterday afternoon The Bluffton Township Fire District responded to the report of a home on fire in a neighborhood off of Simonsville Road. Initial information stated smoke and flames were reported coming from the kitchen. Thankfully, the home had smoke alarms, which were working elsewhere in the home, waking the owner who was napping with her small child. It also alerted other family members and a neighbor who were outside and able to respond and extinguish the fire in the oven quickly with minimal damage to the home.
Only 11% of homes in SC have working smoke alarms that have not exceeded their 10 year life span (That’s 1 in 10). Beyond that, 33% of homes have smoke alarms that don’t work or are older than 10 years old (3 in 10), and 56% (more than half) of homes are not protected at all according to the SC State Fire Marshal’s Office. “In a nut shell, those statistics means that the home we responded to falls into the protected minority across our state”, stated Lee Levesque, Public Education Officer for Bluffton Fire. “The family has working smoke alarms to thank for the lives of at least the mother and child, and that is because someone chose to install and maintain smoke alarms to protect their family” he went on to say.
Smoke alarms can only be relied upon if they are installed and maintained properly. That means that batteries are changed twice a year (change your clock – change your batteries), they are installed in the right places, and they are not older than ten (10) years old. For more information on how to invest in the least expensive life insurance policy you can purchase for your family, contact Lt. Lee Levesque in the Bluffton Township Fire District’s Fire Prevention Division at (843) 757-2800 or via email at levesque@blufftonfd.com.
