By MATT PIKE
St. Joseph Post
The clocks will fall back to Central Standard time early Sunday morning and fire officials across Missouri and Kansas say this is the perfect time to change those smoke detector batteries.
Fire Inspector Steve Henrichson with the St. Joseph Fire Department says 'change your clock, change your batteries' is a nationwide effort.
"Making sure their batteries in smoke detectors are working properly, that's the single biggest thing you can do to keep your family safe," Henrichson tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post.
He says it's also a perfect time to begin checking those heating devices that are pulled out for the colder months
"Making sure to change your filters, make sure to have someone check it to make sure it's burning properly, and having a good Co2 detector in place just in case something does go wrong," Henrichson says."
Henrichson says you should also be sure to check the cords on your space heaters before plugging them in to prevent any home fires.
The Missouri State Fire Marshal says that a majority of home fire deaths occur in homes without working smoke alarms.
Henrichson says that is due to people not taking care of their smoke detectors.
"Lack of maintenance is the biggest thing, people take the batteries out or the battery dies and they take them off the wall, those are the two biggest things," Henrichson explains.
'Change your clocks, change your batteries' is a nationwide effort encouraging everyone to change the batteries in their smoke alarms as they set their clocks back an hour. The time officially changes at 2am on Sunday.
Henrichson says this time of year you never know how many fires you will see
"This is the time of year that sometimes they pick up, sometimes they don't," Henrichson says. "There's years when we can go weeks without and then we'll have three or four in a day, luckily this year we've been doing pretty good."
Henrichson says so far recently the St. Joseph Fire Department has only worked two major fires.