CONSUMERS : Don’t Let Smoke Get in Your Eyes

Sixteen-year-old Scott Rybar thought his alarm clock had malfunctioned when he awakened June 1 to a piercing sound in the middle of the night. While Scott was shaking the clock to get it to stop, his father, roused by the same alarm, wandered into the hall and saw the living room full of smoke.

By the time the fire department arrived, flames were shooting 6 feet above the roof of the family’s Seattle home. Scott’s soccer trophies melted in the heat; the cat succumbed to smoke inhalation.

But what saved the Rybar family was the grating squeal of a smoke detector. Scott’s mother, Jan Rybar, who calls the device “a $9.95 wonder,” said it was pure luck the alarm worked because “we never changed the batteries or paid any attention to it.”

In a home-protection market glutted with elaborate alarm systems, stun guns and trained attack dogs, it is, indeed, easy to overlook this most humble of warning devices.

That oversight can be fatal.

Smoke detectors that don’t work are a factor in many of the 6,000 fire-related deaths nationwide each year, reports the International Assn. of Fire Chiefs, which is urging consumers to replace the batteries in their alarms when they reset their clocks to return to standard time on the last weekend in October.

When smoke detectors became standard household equipment in the early ‘80s, firefighters noted a decline in residential fire deaths. But today, although 80% of homes are equipped with detectors, fire deaths are on the rise again.

The problem, fire officials say, is that too many consumers take smoke detectors--a potentially lifesaving piece of equipment--for granted; as many as 50% of the existing units may be inoperative because of dead or missing batteries.

“The U.S. has the worst fire record of any country in the industrialized world,” said Jim Estepp, president of the fire chiefs association. “We’re losing people in scenarios that should not occur.”

Estepp said most Americans seem to believe they will get ample warning to escape a fire. What they fail to understand, however, is that a spark from a cigarette or a frayed cord can within three minutes lead to a phenomenon called “flash-over,” in which all the combustibles in a room ignite at once. “People think its not going to happen to them” but that is not so, Estepp said.

He and other firefighters recommend changing batteries in a smoke detector annually: “Change Your Clocks-Change Your Battery” is the experts’ slogan to remind consumers of this.

The experts recommend that detectors be tested monthly, a move that simply requires consumers to touch a special button on the units, using a broom handle or other such object; if the alarm squawks when the button is pushed, the batteries are good. Fire-safety educators also suggest lighting a match near the device to test its responsiveness to smoke; these tests work with either battery-operated or hard-wired units.

If yours is among the 20% of homes still not equipped with smoke detectors, a unit that theoretically should last a lifetime can be purchased at any hardware store for about $10, said Inspector Chris Button, a fire-safety specialist for the Los Angeles County Fire Department, who added: “That’s probably the best bargain you’ll ever get. If you have a working smoke detector, your chances are 50% less of having a fatality in a fire.”

For those who have disemboweled detectors in frustration over too many false alarms, Button suggests giving the unit a second chance by moving it away from toasters, showers or other obvious sources of steam or heat.

By regulation, the detector must be within 12 inches of the ceiling, he said, and it should be near a bedroom so it can alert sleepers of hazardous smoke.

A detector that continues to emit false alarms after relocation also may benefit from a dusting with a vacuum attachment, Button said.

Besides checking smoke detectors when resetting clocks next week, the sponsors of the current safety campaign--including the American Burn Assn. and the Eveready Battery Co.--also are recommending a change at the same time in your flashlight’s batteries.

Why? Because a smoke alarm may alert you to a fire, but you’re probably going to need a flashlight to find your way to safety through the smoke and darkness.