Technology

The smoke alarms in my house went off at 4:30 AM. This is always a dreaded event, of course. Most dreaded because the technology of these hard-wired alarms is so poor. 

I have no idea why they went off really. I suspect that our occasional vagrant who has left evidence of prowling around the house at night might have been smoking near an opened basement window which provides a lovely updraft through the stair hall of the house. Unfortunately, fire laws require five alarms along the route of that air flow. 

4:30 AM is a lousy time to be Sherlock Holmes, unless you are injecting cocaine as the famous sleuth obviously did just for occasions of this type. However, Peter did see the outside motion-sensor security light on when he entered the dark kitchen shortly after the alarms began to blare. I was too busy to notice. Some of the alarms are attached to 12-foot ceilings. Since they have battery back-ups, the batteries must be detached to reset the alarms even after the breaker switch for the alarms is turned off. Step ladder required.

The happy discovery was that no fire occurred. The unhappy reminder was that dealing with these damn alarms could very well kill me. My vigilance in the kitchen or basement workshop is fed by my fear of the alarms more than the fear of actual fire. I suppose some self-satisfied fire-prevention engineer would smile in approval. 

As I walk through my old neighborhood, I frequently hear the low-battery chirp of an out-of-code unwired smoke alarm in a stairwell of a deteriorated wooden three-unit building. I muse upon the reality that the horrific fires reported in this city mostly occur in these slumlord domains. Would updated smoke alarms really matter in one of these dumps once a flame ignites? Probably not. 

Once again the conscientious and responsible must suffer for the behavior of the negligent and greedy. It is an example of the lack of thought given by government in dealing with problems. The problem of slum fires is the slum. Peppering a substandard building with smoke alarms at the owner's expense and inconvenience simply isn't going to happen, since it is left to the owner's responsibility to do it. There are no routine inspections of slums. If there were, there would be no slums.