Smoke alarms and the hard of hearing

[g-01]

Folks I need some advice and direction. Our FPO recently discovered that a resident living alone in our township cannot hear her standard smoke alarm. She has brand new hearing aids and can hear a quiet voice at some distance but cannot hear the tonal range of her smoke alarm.

We would like to provide her with something that will alert her to fire during the day and night. An alarm with the built in strobe would be ok when she is awake but would be useless when asleep. A custom vibrating alarm in the bed may work but would be costly.

Does anyone know about alarms with different tone ranges? Different rings? Perhaps like the old fire bells?

Does anyone know of a standardized test process for checking these things?

Thanks in advance

Scotty

[five_alarm]

There seems to be lots of information on the vibrating system in the UK (Link: Google Search Results) (http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=deaf+smoke+alarm&btnG=Google+Search&meta=); Canadian links (Link: Disabilities And Fire Safety article) (http://www.city.kingston.on.ca/residents/emergency/fire/disabilities.asp) where rather hard to find. (http://www.city.kingston.on.ca/residents/emergency/fire/disabilities.asp) The Canadian links Hearing Society (Link) (http://www.chs.ca/) has one of these systems listed in their e-Store (Link) (http://shopping/shopdisplayproducts.asp?id=2&subcat=2&cat=Notification+Systems) (though the store appears to have some problem right now). I'm sure if you contacted them (Link: CHS Contact Page) (http://www.chs.ca/contactus.html) they'd be able to provide you with plenty of information on these systems (possibly a reasonably priced system). Hope this helps.


(false_alarm@firehall.com)

[wfdpic]

also check into a Stobe light, they work and are designed to be used by someone who is hard of hearing, it will even wake a person up!

[Michael13]

give her a pager and put it beside her bed!!! just joking

[infernobuster]

In the past ive been into places where the same situations exsist and the person had a strobe installed in her living room and in her bedroom. The strobe was pretty intense, and she said it was able to wake her up on numerous occasions (false alarms)
Her bed is also hooked into some kind of vibrating device as well, but i dont know what kind of cost is involved in it.