If you picked up an Otago Daily Times this morning, you held a small piece of a burned house in your hands.
The ink used to print today's paper was mixed with ash from a burned house, part of a New Zealand Fire Service campaign to emphasise the importance of working smoke alarms.
Paula Humphries is one who has learned of their importance through hard-won experience.
The Geraldine woman was home one night with her elderly parents and three children, cooking a roast, when a smoke alarm went off.
Assuming the alarm was set off by her cooking, she waved smoke away from the alarm with a tea towel and continued with her evening.
When another alarm went off at 8.30pm she thought “not that bloody thing again”.
But when she walked into the kitchen her attitude changed markedly.
Flames were in the kitchen and the hallway was choked with smoke.
“I have three children down there (in this house),” a panicked Ms Humphries thought.
She got everyone out of the house, and called 111.
Ms Humphries has lost all of her photos, including those of her late husband. The fire was at in the centre of the house, so handy every-day life items like blankets and towels are all burnt and gone.
The experience completely changed Ms Humphries' attitude toward smoke alarms.
"It’s easy to put off installing/checking smoke alarms or putting new batteries in. You put it off for one week, then that turns into two weeks, and so on," she said.
“You never know if that fire could happen to you in that week. You can’t be blase."
- Content supplied by the NZ Fire Service
