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How To Make Sure Your Smoke Alarm Is Keeping You Safe

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- Unless you've burned dinner recently, you likely haven't given your smoke detectors a second thought.

They've been in our homes for decades -- lulling too many into a false sense of security. But there's a simple, affordable solution that could help your family escape alive.

After years of decline, we're having more fatal fires. Minnesota's fire deaths last year jumped 20 percent. Among the 52 lives lost are a dad and two sons in St. Paul, and three young siblings in Minneapolis.

Why, in this age of safety? Smoke alarms have been around since the '70s, but they can also give us false security - if not properly maintained or placed.

St. Paul Fire Investigator Jamie Novak teaches fire safety and suppression around the world. With the help of Coon Rapids firefighters, he'll demonstrate how alarm placement is key to survival. With a bedroom door closed, and no alarm inside, a fire burns undetected and out of control.

Within minutes, the room is devoured by 900 degree flames. Only then does escaping smoke trigger the alarm in the hall -- likely, too little, too late.

"By the time the smoke detector in the hallway went off that person would have been dead," Novak said.

That's why detectors are required in all sleeping areas and outside hallways. Detectors in newer homes must be hard wired, so when one goes off, they all sound.

"Try to do that in an old house built in the 50s, It would cost you $3,000-$5,000 to wire that up," Novak said.

Now, you can have the same protection for under $200 by replacing your battery detectors with wireless alarms.

"Now this is interconnected, so when one in the furnace room goes off in the basement, we'd be notified now there's a fire," Novak said.

The latest smoke detectors communicate wirelessly, anywhere in the house. So if there's a fire in the basement, detectors in bedrooms and hallways all go off, giving you much earlier warning.

"Having an interconnected one set off the one in here," Novak said at the demonstration house. "That's a lot louder and would have woke this person up."

Next, Novak crawls into bed with a burning mattress. He's confident because the room has both a working smoke alarm and a sprinkler system. First, the alarm sounds. Then, heat triggers the sprinkler. Soon, the flames are doused and Novak isn't even singed.

"That's going to save lives, prevent these fires from getting really big, fast," Novak said.

Jennifer Krinke is back home and lucky to be alive. She survived a deck fire that smoldered for hours, undetected.

"And it could have been a much different story for me," she said.

Krinke was saved by a smoke alarm that sounded in the middle of the night.

"If there wasn't a smoke alarm that worked, I would have been here in this space and woken up by joists falling through, probably," she said. "That's why it's important to have interconnected detectors -- so if one goes off, they all go off."

Simple, affordable technology to save both valuable seconds, and precious lives. Wireless smoke alarms can be picked up at home improvement stores for under $30.

Novak also recommends sprinkler systems in all new construction at about two-dollars a square foot. He says you sprinkle your lawn, why not your house?

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