Comment on YSK Your smoke detectors should be replaced every 7-10 years
AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor@piefed.social 3 days ago
I’m genuinely curious: why do you need smoke detectors? I’m asking as an european that has lived without them all their life in more than one country. They are not mandatory here and not even common. What’s the reason to install ther? (I know the reason is to detect smoke, I’m asking the underlying reason behind the need to detect smoke)
If you are asleep and your house catches fire, the idea is that the smoke detector will wake you up with enough time hopefully to escape the fire. That is really their primary purpose.
Some European countries do require them. Germany and Britain require smoke detectors in all residential buildings, for example.
They are mandatory in Ireland, so please stop the “Europe” stuff.
House fires were a huge cause of death and in apartment blocks they also can let one person’s mistake kill hundreds of others.
They are mandatory in Ireland, so please stop the “Europe” stuff.
I haven’t said they are not mandatory in Europe. I have said that I am European and haven’t seen them in the countries I lived in.
Tell me, are Spain and Italy countries that for some reason disqualify you from being European or did you just have a rough morning?
No but it isn’t wise to generalise two of Europe’s less… regulated countries to just “Europe”. Pretty much every European country north of the Alps and west of the Vistula have mandatory smoke alarms/fire detection. It’s not a mystery why. 5000 Europeans a year die in residential fires and social housing, ie paid for by the tax payers, is disproportionately damaged by fire every year.
You can say where you’re from. Nobody’s coming to find you.
Possibly a difference in construction materials. Most stuff in the US is made of wood and other flammable materials. From what I understand, brick/stone based materials are the most common in European buildings.
Wood as a construction material is not really the problem, it burn fairly slow. The problem is our furniture and other stuff changed from wood to MDF and petroleum based based products, reducing the time you have to react from 15 minutes to 3 minutes.
If you look at a map of where smoke detectors are mandatory and where not in the EU, it’s more about rich vs poor: q-certified.eu/…/smoke-detector-legislation-in-th…
In Germany they are mandatory for new buildings for a while now. And at least my landlord sends a company to check if they still work every year, so I assume that’s mandatory too.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/347808687_Analysis_of_the_effectiveness_of_the_smoke_alarm_obligation_-_Experiences_from_practice has an overview of the regulations and an analysis of the impact in Germany.
sends a company to check if they still work every year
Wtf, isn’t it just pressing a button…? Though I guess you avoid the risk of people forgetting.
It’s also required in Sweden, but the building owner is responsible for installation, whereas the people living there are responsible for testing that it still works.
The main goal is probably to have documentation proving it was checked, but the technician is also responsible to fix any issues. I already had one smoke detector replaced because the noise level was a bit below what it should be.
Detect fires, save lives.
Here in France rentals must have them, I believe. But I’ve never known anybody whose home caught fire. Maybe it has to do with building materials and regulations? In my région buildings are stone. My house had 90cm-thick granite walls. Radon is a bigger concern than fire.
Also in Italy, it’s rare for houses to catch fire.
But even if you live in a house made of concrete (Le Corbusier would be proud), things inside of the apartment can still catch fire.
They prevent death.
You’re not foolong me! Get out of here ya darn Velociraptor!
lonefighter@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
I work in EMS. When we respond to house fires in the middle of the night there’s kind of two different ways they go. When people have smoke detectors and their house catches on fire in the middle of the night they’re the ones who call us and we get on scene to find them outside their home in their pajamas, watching their house burn, very shaken up but ok. They never need anything from us ambulance-wise except maybe some blankets. When people don’t have smoke detectors in their homes and they catch on fire in the middle of the night a neighbor or passer-by calls the fire in and we get on scene and the firefighters are dragging bodies out to us.
nocturne@slrpnk.net 3 days ago
As I mentioned in another comment, I almost died in a house fire. I had an aerosol can in a pile of clothes that caught fire from a heater, that can exploded and woke me. Otherwise I would have slept through the fire.
Your comment hits me really hard (I am sure not as hard as being on scene where they did not have detectors). But reading some of the dismissive comments I was starting to think I was over reacting, you assured me I was not.