An Important Message from Your Volunteers at the East Meadow Fire Department
Your East Meadow Volunteer Fire Department, together with the International Association of Fire Chiefs and the Energizer bunny, remind our residents that, on Sunday November 2, 2025 at 2am, all clocks must be set back to Standard time. (Fall – Behind)
In doing so, we promote the reminder to change your smoke detector batteries.
Each year smoke and carbon monoxide detectors save lives. Yet each year lives are lost due to a non operational detector.
Protect yourselves and your loved ones. Join us this November 2nd, and change your smoke detector batteries.
Today, more than 6,200 Fire Departments nationwide participate in the “Change Your Clock Change Your Batteries” campaign, helping to save countless lives. Your East Meadow Fire Department is no exception.
When the campaign was first launched 30 years ago, Energizer, along with the International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC), launched a public education campaign presenting some disturbing statistics. Listed below are the most recent from NFPA.
- Smoke alarms sounded in more than just half of the home fires reported to U.S. fire departments. (53%)
- Three of every five home fire deaths resulted from fires in homes with no smoke alarms (or 38%) or no working smoke alarms (or 21%).
- No smoke alarms were present in almost two out of every five home fire deaths. (or 38%)
- The death rate per 100 reported home fires was more than twice as high in homes that did not have any working smoke alarms compared to the rate in homes with working smoke alarms (1.18 deaths vs. 0.53 deaths per 100 fires).
- In fires in which the smoke alarms were present but did not operate, almost half (or 46%) of the smoke alarms had missing or disconnected batteries.
- Dead batteries caused one-quarter (or 24%) of the smoke alarm failures.
THE PROBLEM WITH TODAY’S HOME FIRE BEHAVIOR: In today’s home fires, modern homes contain a large quantity of synthetic furnishings which ignite and burn faster than natural materials such as wood and cotton ever had. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) conducted full scale fire tests and concluded that escape time in flaming fires can be as little as three minutes (depending on the what’s burning and the phase of fire), as compared to 17 minutes in tests conducted in the 1970s.
The volunteers of the East Meadow Fire Department live smoke alarms day in and day out in their responses to your emergencies. Although much of our community follows these important instructions, we still see homes today, without detectors, expired detectors, or with detectors missing batteries after we open them. We strongly recommend that, should a battery need replacing at times when a spare is not available, the resident must leave the cover off the detector to serve as a constant reminder of the need. There have been many times over the past years where we responded to a fire, and the detectors failed for such reasons. This year alone on Long Island, we have witnessed death and serious injury where the investigation revealed there were no working detectors.
This year in East Meadow alone, we have found situations where there has been a buildup of carbon monoxide that could have become life threatening if not for detection.
Lack of care and maintenance is the number 1 cause of unnecessary fire department responses nationwide. Such alarms put East Meadow volunteers at risk at a moment’s notice.
Although the campaign is targeted to smoke detectors our past years, we urge our residents to change the batteries in their carbon monoxide detectors at the same time. This time of the year presents a significant increased risk as heating systems are now operating in our homes, and the cooler temperatures force homeowners to close the windows making their homes more airtight than in the warmer season. In many cases, heating systems not properly serviced for the upcoming season can be of further complication.
The members of the East Meadow Fire Department urge all residents of our community to not wait, but change your batteries today.
It will give us a better chance to minimize your property damage through our quick response to early detection, but most importantly, it may save your life.
We urge all residents to keep your detector instructions for safe keeping and refer to them for all needs such as installation, maintenance, and care, however, should you have any questions on the proper use and/or installation of your home smoke or carbon monoxide detectors call our business line at 516-542-0578 Extension 580, or E Mail us at the address below.
STORY: John O’Brien Sr JOBrien@EastMeadowFD.Com
