Alarms, extinguishers and emergency readiness

The devices that warn a household — smoke alarms, carbon monoxide alarms, fire extinguishers — with their test and replacement intervals, and the preparation that makes an outage or a forecast storm survivable: supplies, documents, and equipment that was test-run before it was needed.

Common failure modes

• An alarm past the service life printed on its own back
• A battery removed to stop a nuisance alarm and never replaced
• An extinguisher that has lost pressure and was never checked
• Supplies bought once and now years past their date
• A plan that exists in one person's head and was never told to the household

Procedures

• How do I safely heat my house when the power goes out?When the power goes out in cold weather, the choice of how to stay warm is the one that can go wrong fastest. Carbon mon
• What to put in a home emergency kit and how much of itA go bag, a 72-hour kit, a hurricane box, a bug-out bag — whatever you call it, the hard part is not the list, it is the
• How do I find the date on my smoke alarm and how old can it be before I replace itA smoke alarm can look perfectly healthy and still be past its working life, because the part that wears out is the sens
• Decide what food is safe after a power cutWhen the power fails, refrigerated and frozen food are at risk. Use temperature readings and ice crystal presence to dec
• How to check a fire extinguisher at home and read the gaugeA fire extinguisher is one of the few safety devices in a house that gives no signal when it stops working. It loses cha
• Make a home fire escape plan and practise itA home fire escape plan is a simple floor plan of your home that marks two ways out of every room, one meeting place out
• Where should I put smoke detectors, and how many do I needA smoke alarm only protects the room it can actually sense smoke in, so the count and the position matter as much as the
• How old is my carbon monoxide detector and when do I replace itA carbon monoxide alarm has a sensor with a finite working life, and it can reach the end of that life while still looki
• How to change the battery in a smoke detector and test itA smoke detector that chirps once a minute is almost always asking for a battery, and the change itself takes about two
• What do I do during a boil water notice, and what do I do once it is lifted?A boil water notice, also called a boil water advisory or a boil order, is an alert from a water utility or a health dep
• Find which alarm is chirping and what the chirp meansA chirp and an alarm are not the same thing, and mixing them up is how people either evacuate over a dead battery or, wo
• How do I store emergency drinking water for my household?An emergency water supply is water you keep on hand for a disaster or a service failure. The CDC recommends 1 gallon of
• How to get the house ready for a storm and a power outageThis is the list of things worth doing in the day or two before a forecast storm that might take the power out. It cover
• How to test your home for radon with a short-term kit, what closed-house conditions are, and what the results meanRadon is a radioactive gas from rocks and soil that seeps into buildings. It has no colour, smell or taste. No amount of

Where this stops

Hard-wired interconnected alarm systems and any change to alarm wiring need a qualified electrician. Structural storm protection, roof work, and medical guidance beyond the contents of a standard first aid kit are outside this repository.