Fire Prevention Week returns across the country next week. The theme this year is “Don’t Wait: Check the Date!” and in Galesburg, Fire Marshal Randy Hovind says that message is vitally important.
New smoke detectors being produced now run on a 10 year battery life.
Hovind tells WGIL that residents are encouraged by the National Fire Protection Association to change those detectors out every 10 years.
“The NFPA is also suggesting that if you don’t know how old your detector is, you should just go ahead and change it anyway,” Hovind says.
According to an NFPA report, more than 20 percent of all U.S. homes don’t have working smoke alarms. For Galesburg. Hovind says they’ve seen that problem first hand.
“We do see a lot of times in smoke detectors that the batteries were no good because they forgot to change them and that’s common,” Hovind says. “It doesn’t reflect on the homeowner, it’s just something you don’t think about, so, we always tell everyone that when you have a smoke detector with a AA or 9-Volt batteries–you should change those every time you change your clocks. Here pretty soon we’re going to be changing the clocks and you want to change those. Then in the Spring you’d want to change again.”
Hovind says the new 10 year batteries are designed to not require changing batteries as frequently.
