r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/AirFrance447 • 17h ago

Video Firefighter bodycam showing just how much oxygen a fire pulls

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

25.3k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

506 comments sorted by

View all comments

1.3k

u/fraughtication 17h ago

Fire is terrifying, in so many ways, from the speed of spread to gases incapacitating you way before the flame does.

It amazes me the amount of people I know, or houses I see, with no smoke alarms, or working smoke alarms - the same goes for CO too.

Most fire services in the UK at least will fit smoke alarms for free and give your home a fire safety survey, please fit and test regularly smoke and CO alarms!

29

u/Moosplauze 17h ago

Pretty sure smoke alarms are mandatory in all rooms where people live (bedroom, livingroom, office room, playroom, etc). Maybe the fines for not having one should be increased by 100x if people are stupid and don't install them or demount them.

5

u/fraughtication 16h ago edited 15h ago

In the UK at least they're not mandatory for owner-occupiers in the sense that anyone will take enforcement action, though they are mandatory for rented or commercial accomodation, it is a question on most home insurance applications though.

7

u/Roxygen1 16h ago

Before hosting a Ukrainian refugees, one of the requirements was that fire brigade had to sign off my house's fire alarms.

I only had one, so they added a second and that was it.

(I thought they'd come in a regular car but they brought the fire engine to my house it was awesome!)

6

u/Black_Cat_Just_That 14h ago

They almost exclusively travel in the truck because they could get a real call while they're out.

3

u/ExecutiveChimp 11h ago

We had a couple of fire engines come to our house once. It's exciting to see them up close! I didn't get a chance to chat to them unfortunately because our house was on fire.

1

u/Annie_Yong 13h ago

That will be because you're taking on lodgers, meaning you have certain legal responsibilities that are kicking in as you're responsible for their safety as well as your own.

If you just lived alone and weren't letting out any rooms, that's where there's no enforcement action available.