Most of us have heard the tragic story of families who were killed in home fires, because their smoke alarms didn’t go off. How sad is that when lives were lost because no one was responsible enough to check and make sure smoke alarms were working as they should. How could you live with yourself after a catastrophe like that? You need to take the responsibility of reminding yourself to regularly check alarms and batteries if you want to do everything possible to keep your family safe.

A fire can zip through an entire house in under four minutes without intervention. You need those smoke alarms that can detect the first whiff of smoke and sound the alarm. You also need a home evacuation plan so that family members know what to do in case of fire. You can prepare for every possibility, but if that smoke alarm fails to go off, the whole plan is going to fall through.

Fire safety experts recommend testing smoke alarms at least once a month to make sure they remain at ready-alert. By checking your alarms, you’ll also be giving your family a chance to learn what the alarm sounds like and to reinforce for them what they should do if they hear it. By knowing what the sound is and what to do, you can calm your children’s fears immensely.

Once a year you should replace all smoke alarm batteries with brand new ones. If your alarms are operated solely by batteries, if one dies, your safety goes with it. There are alarms on the market which operate both on electric current and back-up batteries. Even with these, you need to keep the batteries in working order. Think about having a power outage with no batteries in the smoke alarm. So much for fire protection! Another kind of battery you can buy runs on lithium batteries which don’t need to be replaced for ten years.

There is no valid excuse for not having working smoke alarms in your home. With new smoke alarms costing as little as $5 including the battery to 9-volt batteries than can be purchased for under $2, smoke alarms can be the best investment you ever make. You might also keep one or two new batteries on hand so that you can replace a battery immediately if it goes bad.

Would you believe there are people who remove the batteries from their smoke detectors because false alarms annoy them? Even if your alarm is ultra-sensitive and goes off for little reasons, like burnt toast, you don’t want to leave your family unguarded. Leave the battery in and bear with the annoyance. Next time you’re at a store, buy yourself a new, less sensitive alarm.

A small town in Ontario, CA came up with an interesting solution to the problem of senior citizens who were reluctant to climb on chairs or ladders to check smoke alarms. What they came up with was to give each senior a pool cue. With the cues the residents could stay safely on the ground and reach up with the pool cue to test the alarm. Along with the pool cues, the seniors were also given small logs they could use to keep track of when they checked their alarms.

No one will dispute the fact that it’s important to check your smoke alarms regularly to make sure they’re working. The problem lies in the fact that people can’t remember to make the checks. You do know, though, that the safety of your family may depend on you remembering to check the alarms.