On Sat, 03 Oct 2009 17:41:49 -0400, "
wrote:



Our local tv station did a story a few years ago about small children
not waking to the loud hi-pitched alarms. They even did a test and
showed several small kids sleeping right thru an alarm right in their
rooms. They showed one that actually had a recorded voice of the
child's mom yelling for them to get up and get out of the house and kids
seemed to hear and respond to that. Here's a story on 'talking smoke
detectors':

OT but my mother was a widow and took comfort that her sons lived at
home, me in highschool and my brother in medical school. She was more
worried about getting sick than about intruders.

It was expected to stay out late, 2 or 3 for the hs graduation dance.
I came home about them and found my mother asleep so I went to sleep
too. She woke up and called my name, for a while iirc, and neither I
nor my brother heard anything. We just kept sleeping. I think the
same thing happened another night. So much for the security she had
thought we gave her. (Tben I went off to college in another city and
my borther went off to an internship.)


http://www.doityourself.com/stry/ara_talkingsmokealar

You can get more with a Google on 'talking smoke detectors'.

I have slept through smoke alarm when it awoke everyone else in the
house. That alarm used to sound the first time or two that the furnace
came on in the fall - accumulated dust burning? No smoke detectable to us.

When my kids were young teens, they used to have their radio on very
softly at night, tuned to pop music station. There was a very popular
song at the time that had a background sound that sounded like "maaaaa";
I normally could barely tell the radio was on in their room, but I would
wake at night when that song played. My subconcious thought my children
were calling me )