Another in my series of reminiscing about old photos but this one includes a public service message :-)
Working for a daily newspaper meant photographing a lot of fires: house fires, vehicle fires, factory fires. Newspapers like fire photos because the colour grabs people’s attention.
Thankfully the number of serious fires has gone down over the years due to better built homes and sprinkler systems. But fatal fires still occur despite the existence of smoke detectors.
I was on the highway only two kilometres away so I arrived in minutes. It surprised me that no one on that busy highway bothered to stop and help. But this is normal for Toronto.
There was a guy sitting on the guardrail, perhaps five metres ahead of the burning truck. He had his arms around himself and was hunched over in a ball. He said he was the driver, no one else was in the truck and he was unhurt. But it was obvious he was in shock. I helped him move further away from the truck and sat with him until emergency services arrived.
Several months later, a firefighter mentioned that the guy gave up driving.
The top photo shows flames jumping from the centre house to the one on the left. The second photo shows the same two houses a few minutes later.
It took mere minutes for each wood-framed house to burn to the ground. As firefighters waited for water to be brought in by trucks, 111 houses were destroyed.
If you think you can wake up at the first smell of smoke, hold your breath and run to the door, you’re fooling yourself.
Now the public service message:
1) When you push the “test” button on your smoke detector and it chirps or beeps, you might feel reassured. But the test button only checks the batteries not the detector. A dead detector with good batteries will look normal and still chirp when you push the test button.
Smoke detectors made after 2013(?) should last *up to* 10 years. Older detectors may last *up to* 5 to 7 years. If you don’t know the age of your smoke detector, throw it out and buy a new one. Use a marker and write the expiry date on the new one.
2) Most people buy ionization smoke detectors because they’re cheap. But spend the extra $15 to $20 and buy at least one photoelectric smoke detector. The reason is that an ionization smoke detector may respond too slowly or not at all.
In theory, ionization detectors are better suited for flaming fires and photoelectric detectors are better for smoky, smouldering fires. So you should have both types of detectors.
But I’ve been at a firefighters training school where they set various types of fires to test smoke detectors. The photoelectric detectors worked every time in every situation. The ionization detectors worked much of the time but sometimes they sounded far too late or not at all.
Whenever you read a news story about a fatal house fire and it reports that fire officials don’t know why the people died because the home had working smoke detectors, that’s a good indication the smoke detectors were ionization. The detectors were too slow to respond or didn’t respond at all.
3) Smoke detectors are not just for your house and cottage. If you own a motorhome or camper, you should have a smoke detector (and even a carbon monoxide detector) for that. A detector should not be left in freezing cold temperatures so remove the detector if you store your motorhome or camper in the winter.
Not only great shots, but you also educate your readers. Keep up the great job!