Bronx fire should remind residents to check smoke detectors

Making sure fire extinguishers, smoke and carbon monoxide detectors are updated

Photo credit: Guido Jansen/Unsplash

I crack jokes about how much my dog thinks I can’t cook. Although she’s slowed down in the past month on doing this, there was a time when she would hide under the dining room table every time I made breakfast. Why? The smoke detector went off one too many times for her comfort, so she started bracing for it and ran for cover the millisecond she saw me turning the stove knobs. She’d whine as soon as she saw a little bit of smoke or fire while I flipped the grilled cheese back and forth, and she would let out a little yelp if she saw me reach over to open my kitchen window.

Recommended Read: “My dog, the cooking critic ~ How the smoke alarm has forever made my dog skeptical of my cooking”

I’m not sure why, but maybe my kitchen is a little cooler in the frigid Chicago winter season. The smoke detector stopped being so sensitive. But today, after more than a month of it not going off, I made vegan Thai curry nuggets, the smoke detector went off and she booked it under the table again. It has become almost routine for me to grab a barstool, reach up my wall and take the smoke detector down. I never let it go off more than twice, but I’ll be damned if that detector isn’t annoying. It probably bugs my neighbors, too.

I thought about that while reading the New York Times post about the Bronx fire on Sunday night. One part stood out to me in particular:

“A fire alarm had sounded, but that happened regularly, and it always turned out to be a false alarm, so most residents ignored it as usual.”

I paused, wondering why was their smoke alarm going off “regularly.”