Hot Takes on Fire Safety, Part 3: Go Pro Monitoring

Fire is an element so old we rarely even think about it. While no one should be overly preoccupied with concerns about house fires — except maybe Team Guardian, that’s kind of our thing — understanding how they start and loading your tool belt with strategies to help prevent them is essential.

We’ve covered a lot of ground in our “Hot Takes” 3-part series on fire safety. If you missed Part 1 and Part 2 , check them out now!

In Part 3, we’re bringing it home with what we believe is the number one, most important factor in fire safety at home: professionally monitored fire alarms.

Why professional fire monitoring?

So why does professional monitoring matter? To start answering that question, let’s recap what we already know about fire:

Fire detection equipment is incredibly important, and working smoke alarms (preferably combination smoke and heat detectors ) are your first line of defense. And you have the choice for those devices to be monitored or non-monitored.

“Non-monitored” smoke alarms, sometimes referred to as “local,” can be effective in providing an early warning of a fire and giving people more escape time. They’re helpful when they’re working properly, as long as you’re at home and alert.

But there are a lot of scenarios where standard smoke detectors can fall short, such as:

What if you aren’t home when fire is detected?
What if your pet is home alone?
What if you’re a heavy sleeper?

What raises the biggest concern in all of these instances is that all of the responsibility is on you. It’s kind of like that old thinker, if a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a sound? Well, we’re posing another question that’s a lot less philosophical:

If a smoke alarm sounds in your house and there’s no one there to hear it, who’s going to save your house?

Maybe no one.

A non-monitored smoke detector is only designed to notify whoever is inside the house or building that there’s an emergency and it’s time to get out. That means that if your alarm goes off and there isn’t anyone who can hear it and call 9-1-1, then the fire department may not be notified until it’s too late to save your property. 

This is why we recommend professionally monitored smoke alarms: You need someone to get your back. Luckily, there are experts for that.

How professional fire monitoring works

Monitored smoke detectors are connected to a 24/7 central station who can notify the fire department whether your system is armed or not, whether you are sound asleep or away from home.

To explain, let’s use Guardian Protection’s process as an example.

Here’s a scenario that could happen in any home, and what happens if you have Guardian’s professional monitoring team on the job:

See the difference? The flow of action screeches...