Plymouth fire chief: We’re making progress

PLYMOUTH — Fire Chief Tom Morrison said his department is making progress when it comes to fire safety, but a lot of people still do not take smoke and CO detectors seriously enough.

“We have full-time people, and spreading the word about fire safety is what we do every day, and we’re still missing people on the edge,” Morrison said Thursday.

A day earlier, a Winter Street family was displaced when a fire started by a lit candle left the duplex they occupied uninhabitable. There were no working smoke or carbon monoxide detectors in the home, and they did not immediately call 911 when they discovered the fire, according to Morrison.

It was the second fire in the state within a 24-hour period where there was no working smoke detector, according to State Fire Marshal Paul Parisi.

Morrison said the Plymouth department puts out fire safety messages on the local cable channel and on its website, as well as doing door-to-door smoke detector campaigns where they offer free battery units.

“Battery smoke detectors are better than nothing,” Morrison said, although hard-wired detectors avoid the problem of having to replace the batteries.

Those campaigns are working, Morrison said. Most residences now have smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, reducing the chances of the loss of life.

“I can remember, years ago, I’d come in Monday morning where there would be notes from parents [of Plymouth State University students] with fire-safety code concerns about the housing, but that has diminished significantly, so we are making progress,” he said.

Laconia Fire Chief Kirk Beattie said state-wide fire codes require all apartments with two or more units to have hard-wired smoke and carbon monoxide detectors on all floors and in sleeping areas. In recent years, having hard-wired systems in one- and two-family homes is required for any new construction.

For those still with battery-operated detectors, fire professionals advise people to replace those batteries at the change from Standard to Daylight Savings Time and vice-versa. That way, residents can be confident that, should a fire break out, they will have sufficient warning to get out and call in the fire.