OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) — After another deadly overnight fire this week, Oklahoma City firefighters are reminding people that having a working smoke detector can mean the difference between living or dying in a fire.
It’s something firefighters will tell you they see far too often: sleeping people succumbing to fire, without ever even realizing it’s happening.
“It's nighttime fires that are the deadly ones,” said Maj. John Craig with the Oklahoma City Fire Department (OKCFD). “The carbon monoxide in smoke actually is what will kind of lull you to sleep and that's what kills you.”
It’s not a problem in search of a solution though.
In fact, Craig says we’ve had a solution available for many years in smoke detectors.
“So what a smoke detector does is it's able to detect that smoke before you do get you awake,” Craig said. “And then that way you can get out of the house.”
He says the numbers don’t lie: the common denominator in most deadly fires is a lack of smoke detectors.
“Statistically you've got a 50% chance better rate of survival if you have a working smoke detector in your in your household,” he said.
Case-in-point, just this week, a woman in Oklahoma City died when her apartment filled with smoke overnight.
The woman’s across-the wall neighbor is who first noticed the smoke once it started leaking into her own apartment.
As firefighters would come to learn, neither apartment had a smoke detector installed.
“It's the smoke detector that that saves their life more, more often than not,” Craig said.
Plus, city code requires every residential building to have at least one smoke detector.
And OKCFD makes sure there’s no financial barrier standing in the way of anyone who needs one.
All you have to do is call OKCFD, and they’ll give you one for free.
“We'll get in touch with them and come out and install however many smoke detectors they need,” Craig said.
To get on OKCFD’s list for free smoke detectors, just give them a call at 405-316-BEEP.
