Shanya Wins Major Award for Fire Detection System
Shanya Gill is a 12-year-old middle school student in San Jose, California. During the summer of 2022, a fire destroyed a restaurant near her home. The restaurant had smoke detectors, but it took a considerable amount of smoke for the detectors to activate, which meant the fire had already started to spread. Disturbed by the fire, Shanya came up with an idea for a fire detection system that uses a thermal camera, which is cheaper and more reliable than the standard smoke detector. This system helped her to win the Thermo Fischer’s Junior Inventor’s Challenge and a $25,000 award. You can read more about Shanya and her amazing invention here.
What can we learn from Shanya’s story?
First, Thanksgiving is traditionally a time when we do a lot of cooking and baking. It is also a busy time for fire departments due to a lot of kitchen fires caused by unattended food left on the burner. Do not leave your food unattended. Fires spread quickly, as was the case in the fire at the restaurant by Shanya’s home. Even if you hear the doorbell, and the gravy is just heating up, turn off the burner and remove it from the stove top before going to greet your guests.
Second, smoke detectors play an important part in fire protection. Whether the smoke detector is at work or at home, it can help to alert you to the presence of a fire. But a smoke detector that has a low or dead battery, or as is the case in some homes, a detector that is disabled because it goes off all the time, can’t detect any impending fire. Smoke detector, like any working piece of life saving equipment, must be regularly inspected, and serviced. If you haven’t checked on your smoke detectors in the past few months, do it now. Don’t wait until it’s too late.
Last, while not exactly a part of this particular story, it is important to remember that when a smoke detector sounds, it is giving you potentially life-saving information. When a fire starts, you only have a little time to evacuate. The time to put together an evacuation plan is “yesterday.” If you don’t know what the evacuation plan is for your worksite, ask your supervisor. If you don’t have an evacuation plan for your home, make one today.
Your safety challenge this week has two parts. First, make sure your home smoke detector is working. Check the batteries, and make sure the unit is clean and free of dust and/or spider webs. A unit that is compromised by dust or webs will give false alarms.
The second part is to review the evacuation plan for your place of work. Talk it over with your coworkers, making sure they know to immediately leave when hearing a fire alarm. Then go home, and do the same with the people you live with.
Happy Thanksgiving!
