To the editor,
When, oh when, will the smoke alarm industry – design and installation, the lot – take responsibility for needlessly endangering the lives of seniors, encouraged in today’s society to ‘continue living independently’ (rather than burden long-term care facilities, right)?
I can’t help wonder if smoke alarms, the way they are designed and installed, save more lives than they cause to be lost. How many seniors and their pets are, any time, day or night, chased out of their home, unable to tolerate the infernal beeping (not all seniors are hard of hearing, and neither are their pets), whether or not the thing is malfunctioning, or just out of battery power?
Many of us seniors have nobody to call on for help. And so, in despair, many decide to haul out the stepladder, climb up, try to bend the head back far enough to look at the ceiling right overhead (not dizzy yet?), climb back down to round up reading glasses, back up again, only to get very dizzy this time, and readers are invited to imagine the end of story. Smoke alarms, a life-saving industry, oh really?
A. Kamminga, Nanaimo
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