Home Fire Monitoring and Why It’s Important
Home fire monitoring could save your life. Residential fires occur every single day and can affect almost anyone. Fires caused by smoking, cooking equipment, clogged chimneys and the like cause millions of dollars in property damage each year. Today’s blog post focuses on the causes of residential fires and how home fire monitoring can help keep you protected from an expensive – and possibly deadly – fire in your home.
First we’ll take a look at some of the statistics about residential fires. In the last ten years home fires have become the third leading cause of home related fatalities. According the to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention someone dies in a fire once every three hours, and is injured in a fire once every thirty minutes. Most fatalities and injuries are related to smoke inhalation as opposed to burns. Here are some statistics relating to residential fires:
- Over one third of residential fires occur in homes without smoke alarms
- Approximately 85% of fires occur in a residence
- Nearly 15,000 people are injured or killed in home fires each year. Not including firefighters themselves.
- Nearly 400,000 residential fires occur in the U.S. each year
- Smoking is the lead cause of death in residential fires
- Cooking causes the most fires in homes
- A little less than half of residential fires occur in the winter months
As you can see residential fires are a big deal, but they are also preventable. The best way to prevent a fire is to be cautious; however, the best way to make sure your home and family are safe if you DO have a fire is with home fire monitoring from a reputable alarm company. Home fire monitoring is often overlooked when people are searching for a new home alarm system. Most homeowners think they only need monitoring for burglary. A lot of times home fire monitoring is not discussed or even offered. Despite this fact many alarm companies are beginning to realize the importance of home fire monitoring and are beginning to offer it as an included service with their monthly monitoring options. Some of these companies include FrontPoint Security and Protect America.
Home fire monitoring often has little to no cost involved (with a good alarm company) and your only investment is for the actual smoke or heat detectors. This is a small investment considering the safety you’ll feel knowing the fire department will be automatically dispatched should you have a fire in your home.
When searching for a new home alarm system, or looking to add to your existing system, it is imperative that you inquire about home fire monitoring. Like we said there is often little recurring costs involved to include this service with your monthly alarm monitoring and the peace of mind is worth the small up-front costs.
