Let Kidde Worry-Free Alarms Help You & Eighty MPH Mom Be a Hero

This was my friends’ house.

There was a young family that once resided in this house. They raised their children here. They played with their pets here. This house was what encompassed their life together and in one night, everything was gone. Thankfully, the family of four was unharmed in this fire but, unfortunately, I cannot say the same for their pets.

House fires are real, very real. We all do our best to teach our children the basics (stay low, escape routes, get outside, the stop-drop-roll technique, call 911, etc.) and we try to practice fire safety but we never think that it will happen to us. But the reality is that it can, and it can all happen in the blink of an eye. June is Home Safety Month and, in an effort to further help prevent this from becoming your story, I wanted to share some great safety information with you.

Did you know that, according to FEMA and the U.S. Fire Administration, over 3,400 Americans die in home fires per year and nearly 18,000 narrowly escape with their lives and make it out with injuries – temporary and/or lifelong. One of the simplest steps that you can take to protect yourself from the wrath of a fire is to install smoke alarms and to insure that they are working properly.

Up until now, with most smoke alarms, the batteries needed to be changed quite frequently (every sixth months or so). Now, despite having a good amount of batteries in our house, we don’t really replace the batteries in any one item until we try it and figure out that it no longer works. That is certainly not a situation you’d want to be in in the event of a fire. You want to be one hundred percent sure that your alarms work as they should and have good batteries in order to do so.

Nearly nine out of every ten homeowners (87%) have heard their smoke alarm low-battery chirp but, of those who have heard the sounds, one in three said that they would not be extremely likely to replace the battery within 24 hours.

When it comes to a life or death situation, you never want to look back and say “If only I had checked the batteries.” Your life and the lives of your family members are far more important and if the simple act of swapping out an old battery for a new one could mean someone’s wellbeing over the potential loss of life, well, it is certainly a task worth doing. Since this is still an often forgotten task, Kidde came up with a solution – their line of Worry-Free smoke alarms.

Kidde Worry-Free smoke and carbon monoxide alarms offer ten years of continuous battery powered protection. There are NO batteries that need changing! Powered by a sealed, life-long lithium battery, these alarms are always on and you can rest easy knowing that you and your family are prepared.

While smoke alarms are installed in 96 percent of US homes, 20 percent of those alarms are not functioning, mainly due to dead or missing batteries. Moreover, two-thirds of residential fire deaths occur in homes without smoke alarms or in homes with non-functioning smoke alarms.

The Kidde line of Worry-Free smoke alarms features four different models designed for location-specific safety needs such as added lights to help one find their way out of a dark hallway and smart sensing technology for kitchen alarms to reduce unnecessary nuisance alarm sounds caused by cooking. Additionally, Kidde offers two Worry-Free carbon monoxide alarms to further protect one’s family and house.

When we first moved into our new house, I was shocked to see that our two story dwelling only had one alarm per floor – one in the downstairs hallway and one at the top of our stairwell. Now, I’d never claim to have the same amount of knowledge in this regard when compared to some of my firefighter friends but even I knew that this was not nearly enough. While I did know that most batteries need to be changed twice a year or so and I was sure to check the expiration dates and battery life, I’ll admit to not knowing where exactly we’d need to place new alarms.

Nearly three-quarters (74%) of homeowners cannot correctly describe where smoke alarms must be placed in the home.

Of course, with kitchens being the leading area of origin for home fires, I knew to start there. Aside from that, it was a guessing game of where would the potential fire start and where would it travel to from there. Thankfully, with help from Kidde, we were able to pinpoint which locations in our house needed alarms the most and we’ve begun installing them throughout.

BUY:
You can purchase Kidde Worry-Free smoke and carbon monoxide alarms direct from their online store as well as Home Depot, both, online and in-stores nationwide. Prices start as low as $29.

CONNECT:
Be sure to keep up with Kidde via social media on their Facebook and Twitter pages to stay up to date on all of the latest news, new product releases, special promotions, and great safety tips to help your family stay safe.

Now, I could go on for days with an endless amount of tips for, both, you and your children to help prevent you from being in a situation like that of my friends.  Instead, I will let you look further into it with help from these links:

• Kidde, Steps to Safety: How to Protect Your Family from a Fire
• U.S. Fire Administration, Fire Safety for Parents
• Safe Kids Worldwide, Fire Safety

Additionally, I want to invite you to join me in becoming a Safety Hero.

Make it a family thing. Educate yourself and your children about fire safety and don’t allow yourselves to become part of the statistic. Instead, share information; educate others; be a hero.

Print out this fun Safety Hero worksheet for your children to get the discussion going and make a fire escape plan with your family. While you’re on the topic of fire and home safety, head on over to the Be A Safety Hero quiz. This quick, ten question quiz will help you gauge your own knowledge of fire safety, share with you some great information, and truly allow you to be a hero.

How you may ask? At the end of the quiz, question #10 will ask you which blog encouraged you to take the quiz and, by clicking on Eighty MPH Mom, you will be helping us in our goal to win 50, 100, or even 150 smoke alarms for our local fire department. To further spread the word of fire safety and the helpful Be A Hero movement, I’ve actually opted to split the smoke alarm donation between my current town as well as my hometown in the event that we win. How can you help us win? Just be sure to choose Eighty MPH Mom from the dropdown menu at the end of your quiz!

I certainly hope that this has helped you to start thinking about fire safety and how to become better prepared. After all, I hope to never see any of you in a situation like my friends were in. Fires can be so heartbreakingly devastating and, if the simple act of preparing yourself and your home can prevent such a disaster, taking the time to do so is well worth the effort.

Join me.

Join Eighty MPH Mom.

Join Kidde.

Be a hero.