On January 31 of this year I submitted to the City Council and Order for a Hearing relative to smoke detectors. Homeowners and tenants in the City of Boston and throughout the Nation have, over the years, become more aware of methods to protect their persons and dwellings from fire. One of these methods is the use of a smoke detector to sense when a fire is near.

In recent years, questions have arisen as to the effectiveness of ionization technology as the only technology used in residential dwellings. The reason for these questions has to do with instances where ionization technology was unable to detect a smoldering fire. In addition to the concern that ionization fire detectors do not detect smoldering fires is the fact that ionization detectors often are falsely set off due to sensitivity when cooking. This sometimes leads to the resident disabling the detectors which can lead to future loss of life due to a non-working fire detector. At a hearing I held on Monday, July 9 Deputy Fire Chief Joseph Fleming from the Boston Fire Department testified that one method that could be better than using ionization technology is photo-electric technology which detects both smoldering and flaming fires.

During the hearing video was shown that demonstrated how long it took three different smoke detectors to go off when a smoldering fire was set to a couch. The three detectors were an ionization detector, a photo-electric detector and a combination photo-electric and ionization detector. In the two tests that were conducted, only the combination and photo-electric detectors were set off in a reasonable amount of time. The ionization detector took over thirty minutes in one test and over forty minutes in another.

Chief Fleming has also stated that on average fifty percent of everyone who dies in Massachusetts dies when smoke detectors work and most of those fires are smoldering.

Some will argue that both kinds of detectors work well enough to get people out of homes, but I disagree. I believe that we should move quickly to install photo-electric in every business and home in Boston.

I will be reconvening this hearing sometime before September to further explore this issue and determine how we will proceed. In the meantime, while we debate this issue, all residents should make certain that their smoke detectors are in working order.