Will your 10-year-old smoke alarm fail you?

Investigators say 60-year-old might have escaped her San Juan Capistrano home if her 35-year-old alarm had been operating.

By SALVADOR HERNANDEZ
The Orange County Register
Wednesday, March 5, 2008

SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO – It may have been a fire burning in the floor below Rita Sales' bedroom that killed her, but investigators believe it was a smoke alarm that failed her.

The 60-year-old woman and her dog were in the bedroom when the fire began smoldering in the family room at 10 p.m. Jan. 25, officials said. It took firefighters about an hour to put out the blaze in the two-story home in the 33600 block of Avenida Calita, but investigators believe Sales might have been able to get out if the smoke alarm outside her bedroom had worked.

"We don't believe the smoke alarms were activated," said Chief Investigator Devin Leonard of the Orange County Fire Authority.

Investigators believe Sales' home was equipped with the same hard-wired smoke alarms that were included when the home was first built in 1973. Although the smoke alarms should be replaced every eight to 10 years, officials believe that most of the 400-plus homes in the same tract, like Sales' home, are using the same, ineffective alarms.

This Saturday, about a dozen firefighters are expected to be sent door to door in the tract where Sales lived to inform residents about the need to replace smoke alarms that could be more than 30 years old. The simple practice of replacing the alarms and checking the battery power could save lives, said Laura Blaul, Fire Authority fire marshal.

Hard-wired smoke alarms are connected to the home's power supply and use a battery as a backup. Although batteries should be replaced every six months, the entire smoke alarm needs to be replaced every 10 years. Because they are connected to the home itself, many homeowners have an incorrect notion that hard-wired alarms don't have to be replaced, like battery-power-only detectors, she said.

In the past six years, about 70 percent of fires in the county have been in homes equipped with ineffective smoke alarms, Blaul said.

Although the cause of Sales' death is not yet known, most fire-related fatalities are caused by smoke inhalation rather than the flames.

An effective smoke alarm could be vital, giving people plenty of time to escape the fire before it's too late and before the fire gets out of control. With daylight saving time approaching this coming Sunday, officials hope that will remind residents to take the time to check the power of their alarms, and replace those that are too old.

"People are basically apathetic about a fire," Blaul said. "They think it won't happen to them."

About six people in the county die each year because of fires, but fire officials seem to fight an uphill battle trying to get residents to take such precautions as establishing an escape route, checking the battery power in their alarms every month, changing the battery every six months during daylight saving time, and replacing the detectors every 10 years, Blaul said.

And although older alarms may give positive results when tested for their power supply, with age they could lose the ability to detect smoke.

During the investigation, firefighters tested the smoke alarms of neighbors and they, too, were ineffective, Leonard said. Those, too, were the original alarms.

Most of the 400 homes in the tract are believed to have the original alarms from 1973, but officials believe other homes in the county are also equipped with hard-wired detectors that should be replaced.

Blaul said she's hoping the message spreads outside of San Juan Capistrano and gets residents to check theirs.

"We need to get their attention," she said.

Contact the writer:shernandez@ocregister.com or 949-454-7361