Children and smoke alarms

[Clefable]

What with the awful fires in the news, I thought it was worth posting that standard fire alarms fail to wake young children in the majority of cases.

Studies done after the awful Mick Philpott arson case, where five of the children died in their sleep despite smoke alarms being operational, show that standard alarms struggle to wake children in around 80% of cases. Intermittent sounds work better but the best results were with a voice alarm, where kids woke up in 10-15 seconds where three minutes of continual blaring didn’t.

This means that in the case of a fire, don’t assume the alarm will have woken your children, even young teenagers. It’s instinct to run downstairs to see what’s going on, but wake the children first because if you get trapped down there, they may not wake up, even with an alarm blaring.

We had a false alarm last month around 4am, every alarm in house going as they are linked, and my kids did not wake up. We stupidly went downstairs to investigate and we should not have. Thankfully it was just a faulty sensor on one.

You can get alarms that use voice alerts but annoyingly I haven’t found any that fit the fairly recent Scottish Government regulations. I may buy a separate voice one for upstairs.

Just something to bear in mind.

Oh and it’s apparently also the case for the elderly, where they are less likely to respond to higher pitches.

Scary isn't it, I remember reading about this too and we proved it recently whereby my child slept through the alarm going off in his room because we'd managed to set off the smoke detector elsewhere in the house. He didn't stir at all despite the noise.

And also, if your house has multiple floors, you should wire the smoke dectors to each other so that if one goes off they all go off.

As a child, I slept through the arrival of the fire brigade and their successful snuffing of an enormous chimney fire.

Not without your children though, that's the point the OP was making.
If they go and investigate and get trapped downstairs by the fire, the children will still be fast asleep upstairs.

But we went downstairs to see what was going on without waking the children. That was my point. They were still asleep. If we had then been unable to get back up, they possibly wouldn’t have woken up and wouldn’t be able to get out. I went back upstairs and to my surprise found they were still fast asleep.

DH and I can escape from the second floor and help the kids to do so, but we can’t do it when separated on a different floor and kids are asleep.

OPs point being if there was the possibility of a fire they should all have gone downstairs together. Thanks OP, didn't know this but makes sense. I know mine wakes me so would go with shouting to the kids as I'm getting out of bed and then going down together. Find it reassuring to have that plan in mind- I'm not preoccupied with fire but I'd never put my kids in the attic room either.

Edited: ignore the first bit- multiple cross posts!

This was in the new Scottish Government regulations a few years ago and there was a lot of complaining about the hassle and expense of replacing alarms to fit new linked ones, but I am sure it will save lives.

Up to you?

Has anyone found a voice smoke alarm? On another thread I saw someone mention them and looked into it, I was shocked to learn small children dont really wake to the standard ones

Google Nests used to do this but I think they’ve stopped making them. I am going to set some time aside this weekend to investigate. Would appreciate any recommendations if anyone reads this who has some!

@Clefable
Now that you know your children don't hear the alarms, only one of you should investigate, phone in hand to report, and the other should stay upstairs to facilitate exit if necessary. In general, that might be a good family policy for lots of people.

You should (must, really!) have a smoke detector on every floor and if your house has remote areas, I'd have extra ones. A few extra batteries is a small price to pay.

Good to hear govt making people do sensible things! It really is pence to pay compared to the alternative.

Presuambly there are now 'smart' ones which can make your phone squawk like a siren right next to your bed and can make your smart speakers amplify the alarm?

Kitchens are an obvious place for fires to start but truly they can start anywhere from great halls to garages.

Christmas is an especially dangerous time because of all the extra decorations, many electronic like strings of lights and inflammable like tinsel and trees.

I have to agree, we have a loft extension where DD sleeps, every floor has wired smoke alarms with battery back up.

We had one night where the alarm went off from 2am until 5am, we have absolutely no idea what happened. We checked each room, incl. DD's bedroom and she slept through all of it.

DH investigated downstairs while I was upstairs to be able to get DD if necessary.

DD can sleep through nearly everything.

Absolutely, in the future we have agreed DH will go downstairs and I will remain upstairs ready to wake the children. Or obviously if we smell any smoke or suspect there is a fire, we just get them straight up and go. But when that alarm went off at 4am, although I was instantly awake, the kind of ideal order to do things in just disappeared, DH bolted downstairs and I rushed after without really thinking about it, the adrenaline I suppose.

We have linked alarms in pretty much every room, heat detectors in kitchen, and smoke/carbon monoxide everywhere else. And it’s a fair noise when they go off, which is why I think people assume no one can sleep through it!

This is another reason every home should have a fire plan, it helps you to really think about what you would do in the event of the detectors going off especially at night time we don't always think clearly when we are woken from a deep sleep.

We have wires linked alarms with battery back up, they are significantly louder than the £20 battery only ones. Ours are required due to having 3 floors but even in standard 2 floor houses I suggest getting the wired kind fitted at least when you next are decorating

Yes ours are wired and very loud! When awake and I’ve set it off while cooking, the kids cover their ears and hate it. But asleep they didn’t even stir. It was only after the Boxing Day fire that I was reminded of that and did some investigating and found it’s a very common phenomenon.

I remember reading about this years ago and it was really useful to know so well done for sharing.
I had a house fire when my son was 10, alarms didn’t wake him but I got him up, 3am and put him in the garden while calling 999. The thing I found so crazy afterwards is that I couldn’t work out why the alarm was even going off, couldn’t see any smoke at first, according to the firefighters this is common, the smoke rises and sits on the ceiling getting lower and lower but hopefully you have an alarm to alert you something is wrong.
In my case it was an overheated storage heater, once the flames started my entire front room was in flames within a minute.

Gosh that’s terrifying, thank goodness you were able to get out. And also scary to know about the smoke, you would assume it would be obvious but not so!

Should make one that sounds like WhatsApp. They wake up at the first chime of that! 😂

I am particularly sighted so that probably didn’t help either.
I hadn’t heard about the Boxing Day fire so just looked it up, so tragic.

We have Kidde smoke and carbon monoxide alarms which speak as well as making the alarm noise.

One of our children slept through the old smoke alarms we had and we subsequently found out this is quite common.

Our fire was in the kitchen which is where we kept all our keys as it’s recommended not to leave them near the door. We moved them to somewhere more accessible nearer the doors they unlocked.

We have the nest alarms dotted around the house, they’ve gone off a couple of times in the night and woke everyone up. Added bonus is, it’s linked to my phone, which goes bonkers when the alarms are triggered.

If one is triggered, they all go off.

I’ll look into that make!