It's time to pull out the ionization detectors and go photoelectric.
These kinds of newspaper headlines are depressingly common. The copy in the article says “there were no working smoke alarms.” This is a significant difference in nuance; smoke detectors have been legally required in all housing for decades. But they are often not maintained, and in fact they are often disabled because of false alarms, usually from cooking.
This is obviously a serious problem for everyone, but also for those interested in green and healthy building as we try and get rid of flame retardants. And like everything I complain about, it is also a design problem; people don't do these things randomly but respond to their conditions, their environment. If people are disabling their smoke detectors then there is something fundamentally wrong with their design.
Photoelectric vs ionizationNFPA Public service download/Public Domain
