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Listening to a discussion yesterday on BBC Radio 4 -The Life Scientific-involving a forensic scientist, Niamh Nic Daeid and Jim Al-Khalili. The discussion turned to smoke alarms as she had investigated the recent deaths of the 5 Philpott kids [all under ten] due to an arson attack by their father.
It appears that the children slept through the smoke alarms warnings -they were checked out as OK after the event. Further research by an operational firefighter student on a Master's course run by this forensic scientist- led to some startling conclusions. Well, startling to me!
In a survey of 30 odd kids it was found that 80% of the girls slept through the alarms and 100% of the boys!! The research was repeated 6 times with the same results.
A quick check on the net found some similar results.
Does this worry you all as parents as it did me? Particularly as my kids hearing was usually very acute as you might normally expect. So we must ensure we wake them in case of fire as it seems they are very unlikely to wake us.
Regards
Mike
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Rank: Super forum user 
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The easy sleep of innocents. I've been wakened by the plaintive bleep of an alarm with a low battery - hard to imagine sleeping through an alarm sounder.
That said, and from experience, teenagers will happily lie there and ignore an alarm - particularly if they've experience of faulty or false alarms. Same is true of adults in the workplace.
Unfortunate too that the smoke effects in a dwelling are so swift and deadly due to the extent of soft furnishings, foam fillings etc.
As Crosby, Nash and Young said: "Teach your children well."
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Rank: Super forum user
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These findings resonate with my experience. When my son was young you could not wake him up. You could shake him, talk to him, take him out of bed, stand him up, but he was still asleep.
We did have smoke alarms in their bedrooms, but they would have woken us up, and we would have physically removed the children!
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Rank: Forum user
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On the one occasion my smoke alarm in my house has gone off at an ungodly hour my little boy slept through it which I couldn't believe. It was the biggest fright I've ever had in my life but thankfully there was no fire - it was my hubby leaving the bathroom door open after coming out a shower so that he didn't need to put any other lights on and wouldn't disturb me (ha ha ha ha). It did however may me re-look and think further about what I would have done if there had been a fire.
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Rank: Super forum user 
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My wife heard the same radio programme. Yes it worried us probably equally.
Youngest daughter can apparently be kept awake by the merest whisper of the TV on downstairs, but maybe now we won't be assuming the smoke alarm in her room plus the one on the landing and the one downstairs will wake her.
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Rank: Super forum user
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Quite worring, although I suspect that in most cases they hear the alarm perfectly well but just ignore it out of complacency or laziness. As adults, how often have we ignored alarms, assuming they didn't matter! Even personal attack alarms these days are more to disorientate the attacker than raise the alarm with others, as most would simply ignore them.
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Rank: Super forum user 
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I have reversing alarms on my bumpers, they didn't stop me reversing into a metal post last week.
Familiarity was to blame, they operate whenever the car is near to anything.
Thankfully I was only going slow but it will still cost me £50 for a new rear light cluster.
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