[Opinion] A 'Fire Alarm' on Our Home Ceiling Ensures Safety (安全)

Jae-yoon Ma, Head of Jeonnam Fire Headquarters.

We make many choices throughout our lives. Humanity has progressed through moments of crisis by making decisions involving Type I errors (false positives) and Type II errors (false negatives).

When hunting, if the dry leaves rustle, some may judge it to be a wild beast, while others may think it is just the wind. If it really is the wind, the difference is subtle, but if it is a wild beast, those who dismiss it as the wind risk losing their lives. The former is a Type I error, and the latter is a Type II error.

We are descendants of those who did not ignore perceived dangers but responded to survive, evolving through Type I errors.

Even in the 21st century, as we embark on space travel, we strive to choose Type I errors. Companies do not want products that are actually good to be discarded as defective, nor do they want defective products to be mistakenly judged as good and delivered to consumers. They know the damage caused by the latter is much greater.

However, when it comes to safety, it seems that Type II errors are more often favored. The ‘confirmation bias’ mindset, which focuses only on information that aligns with one’s values, beliefs, and judgments in the field of safety while ignoring other information, has even led to the term ‘safety negligence.’

This mindset is especially common in residential fires. “Our parents have lived well in our house for 30 years, so what could possibly happen?” “A fire in our house? That has nothing to do with me.”

But on what basis or data can we say our house is safe? Is the home where our family lives truly a safe place?

The answer lies in fire statistics. In the past five years (2016?2020), there were 13,169 fires in Jeonnam Province, of which 2,746 were residential fires, accounting for 21%.

Meanwhile, residential fire deaths accounted for 58 out of 102 total fire fatalities, or 57%. The space where the whole family lives and should be the safest is not as safe as one might think.

So how should we respond to the warning signals given by residential fire statistics?

Firefighters perform the task of protecting the safety and lives of citizens at disaster sites. Even if a house has not had a fire for 30 years, what choices and preparations should they make in response to the risk signals from fire statistics?

First, the cause of high casualties in residential fires had to be identified. When a fire breaks out at night in a home, residents may not be aware of it, or there may be no firefighting equipment to extinguish the fire early. For people with disabilities and the elderly, early evacuation is difficult, resulting in relatively high casualties.

Therefore, facilities that can alert residents to a fire and equipment to extinguish an initial fire were needed. Firefighting equipment that is low-cost, easy to install, and usable by anyone, applicable to all homes?this is the ‘residential fire safety equipment’: fire alarms and fire extinguishers.

To reduce casualties from residential fires, it is recommended to install fire alarms in every room and place fire extinguishers in every home. The effect of a fire extinguisher in the early stages of a fire is similar to that of a fire truck, and a fire alarm attached to the ceiling detects fire and helps rapid evacuation with its alarm sound.

At the end of last year in Daejeon, two young sisters had a cooking accident where cooking oil caught fire. Fortunately, the fire alarm sounded, and a neighbor rushed over and extinguished the fire with a fire extinguisher. This month in Cheongju, a homeowner working in a nearby garden heard the fire alarm inside the house and called 119, preventing major damage.

These were close calls where lives and homes could have been lost, but the rapid response triggered by the fire alarm prevented the damage.

As seen in these cases, to protect our homes and families from the unpredictable fire disaster, we must learn the lesson of choosing Type I errors from fire alarms.

Although investing in installing fire safety equipment may not be easy in these difficult times due to COVID-19, we hope to avoid the mistake of ‘locking the barn after the horse is lost’ (망우보뢰, 亡牛補牢).

Spending 30,000 won on purchase and 5 minutes on installation to protect our precious family from fire is undoubtedly a way to prevent Type II errors.

Will you choose a ‘Type I error’ or a ‘Type II error’? Will you continue to ignore the warning signals given by residential fire casualty statistics? Please take a moment now to check the ceiling of your home.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.