Emergency Management Director Todd Pritchard says when you set your clock back, it’s a good time to make sure you and your family are set for some of the safety things that we sometimes just forget about. One of them is checking smoke detectors. “Nearly 2,700 people die and 1,500 are injured because of a nonworking smoke detector — and a vast majority of those are simply due to the fact that there is no battery in the unit. Obviously, that’s a very preventable tragedy.”
The newer detectors with the lithium ion batteries still need to be checked regularly to make sure they work, and old ones swapped out after about five or six years.
Carbon Monoxide detectors are also important. Pritchard says several people die every year from this odorless, colorless killer.
Daylight Saving Time officially ends at 2:00 a.m. Sunday.
Larry Lee, WSAU