This is Fire Prevention Week and local firefighters are highlighting this year’s theme.
It’s “Learn the Sounds of Fire Safety” and it focuses on educating people what sounds the smoke and carbon monoxide alarms make.
“If you hear the [alarm] go off and they continuously beep, and it becomes annoying, ideally you are supposed to get out of your house,” Don Crawford of Butler City Fire Department said. “Or if your carbon monoxide alarm goes into what we call ‘full alarm’ you need to get out.”
However, Crawford says if it’s more of a chirping sound, there are a few things you need to check out.
“If it’s chirping, it could be a bad battery. So we always recommend in the spring and fall, when you change your clocks, you should change your batteries,” Crawford said. “Along with that too, the device could be bad. They only work for so long. They typically last 10 years, but it could be less; and they’ll start to chirp to indicate there’s a problem.”
Fire Prevention Week was started in 1925 and is always held during the week of October 9th—which marked the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.
