I'm Not Getting A Smoke Detector!
The redneck y'all love to hate, Brent Terhune.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Throughout my entire life I have been amazed at the humanity of firefighters. They run into God-forsaken death traps and formidable situations: gas leaks, unstable flooring, explosion risk from unknown flammable materials, janky furnaces -- the list is endless. When my father died suddenly, firefighters were first on the scene. When I was in grade school, firefighters visited to give instruction on what to do in a fire. (That was in the time before smoke detectors.) I still follow those tips today.
The range of the knowledge of a firefighter goes well beyond extinguishing fires. They routinely deal with human beings caught in life threatening situations such as mangled automobiles, live electrical utility wires felled by storms, gas leaks. The list of the knowledge and humanity of a firefighter knows no bounds. I am awestruck by them. Especially by the fact that they would not hesitate to save the life of the "gentleman" featured in the video. (He's joking, right?) 
He fails to realize that he would not just be saving his own life by the use of a smoke detector, but possibly that of a firefighter too. (To think that they would have to haul his dead weight out of his house.)
So I salute the best people on earth: firefighters. I helped to do my part in by my annual changing and testing of the batteries in my smoke detectors and review of an exit plan. Usually do this at Halloween -- the beginning of the heating season in the Northeast. Firefighters know full well the one certainty about fires: they are unpredictable.
