Paige Putnam, journalist

Note: This topic is very important to me, as I recently experienced a significant house fire and our smoke alarms did not go off. 

Take a moment and think to yourself: when was the last time you checked the batteries of the smoke alarms in your home? Did you ever wonder if by some off chance they may not go off if your house was on fire, even with brand new batteries? Believe it or not, this does happen, and more often than you might think. There are actually two different types of smoke detectors, ionization detectors, and photoelectric detectors. Ionization smoke detectors detect particles of fast-paced open flame fires and photoelectric detectors detect smoke particles from fires that smolder for a long period of time before turning into open flames. Depending on where in a house a fire starts, how fast it spreads, and the type of fire it is, it could take up to hours to see or smell smoke. If smoke alarms do go off, individuals will often see or smell smoke before they hear the alarm. The type of fire alarm and its location in a house also affects the likelihood of whether it will go off or not.