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More than 8 in 10 sleeping children will not respond
reliably to a smoke detector alarm, according to researchers from the Centre for
Environmental Safety and Risk Engineering at Victoria University in Melbourne.
The researchers studied 20 children aged 6 to 17 years who slept with an alarm
outside their bedroom with the door left open. They were monitored over four
nights with the alarm going off on two nights not known to the children in
advance. A monitor was attached to their wrists to record their movements. Only
3 of the 20 children woke on both nights when the alarm went off. Six children
woke on one of the nights and 11 slept solidly through both alarms. Earlier
studies by the centre have shown that adults will wake up in 100 per cent of
cases unless they are affected by drugs or alcohol. The researchers presented
their findings earlier this month to a fire safety congress in Melbourne. They
suggest that in houses where the children sleep well away from adults, alarms in
the two areas should be interconnected.