In December last year, I was trying to decide if I wanted to participate in a fire drill at work. You see, I was a fire warden, which means I had some extra work to do. There is a story behind this, about why I’m peeved about being a fire warden, but I’ll not talk about that now. For this fire drill, the fire wardens were promised that there would be a reward. It was supposed to be a monetary award, and I figured it was worth the one hour of my time.
But I got cheated. I got lesser money, and it was in the form of shopping vouchers, and it was topped off with a… smoke alarm. Yeah. Can you believe it. It’s like S$6 on Ebay.
Anyway. So I now have a smoke alarm. I believe most Singaporeans don’t get such gadgets for themselves. I probably wouldn’t get one myself too.
This is a pretty simple gadget (obviously, since it costs only S$6). Detects smoke and gives off a shrill alarm.
I cannot say this is useless. It’s always better to be safe than sorry, right? I just hope that when no one’s home, someone else outside who hears the alarm knows what it is about and that they should call for help.
These devices are extremely cheap, but you can’t argue that they can’t potentially save someone’s life.
In some states in Australia, smoke alarms are mandatory in all homes. Statistics have showed more lives have been saved by them. You will need to replace the battery annually.