HAPPY VALLEY, Ore. — A Clackamas woman credits her smoke alarm with saving her life and her home. She now hopes others will realize how important it is to have working smoke detectors.
The Clackamas Fire Department demonstrated how quickly a spark can turn into an inferno Wednesday. Firefighters lit two mock livings rooms on fire. Both fake rooms had smoke detectors, but only the room on the left had a sprinkler system. The one without the sprinkler system was quickly engulfed in flames.
As Lisa Macias watched the fake living room burn, it felt a little too real.
“I was thinking to myself, the one on the right could've been my house very easily, most definitely, because when I opened the doors the second time the flames were bigger,” explained Lisa Macias who’s home caught on fire last month.
Macias was home working in the afternoon last month when her smoke alarm went off. She did not smell any smoke though, so at first, she did not think much of it.
“I thought well, probably the laundry, the heat from the dryer most likely set it off because it did last summer,” Macias explained.
This time though, when she opened the door to her laundry room she saw flames.
“You go into panic mode, you know, it was flames, oh my god flames!” Macias exclaimed. “Ok, where's the extinguisher? Get the dogs outside, you know, so it just, it really creates a panic on the inside, you're shaking.”
Macias was able to get her dogs outside and grab the fire extinguisher. As she worked to keep the fire from spreading, her alarm company, ADT called the fire department for her.
“I'm very happy my alarm system is monitored, and they called the fire department for me because I was shaking so much it was really hard for me to dial my phone,” Macias said.
Without her smoke alarm, she believes the fire would have been much worse.
“Really the lessons learned are to have an extinguisher and to make sure to have some type of an alarm as well because, without it, I wouldn't have known anything was happening,” Macias said.
October is National Fire Safety Month, so ADT donated $5,000 to the Clackamas Fire Department Wednesday, to buy smoke detectors for people who need them. Macias hopes people will hear her story and realize how important it is to have a fire extinguisher and working smoke alarm in your home.