U.S. fire departments respond to more than 353,000 home structure fires a year, according to the National Fire Protection Association. Earlier this year, Kayla found her home to be one of them.
While running errands, Kayla received a notification on her phone from the Alexa Guard feature. The alert informed her that the sound of a fire alarm had been detected in her home, and it included an audio clip for her review. Kayla used her Alexa app to drop in on her Echo Show to look inside her house—and all she saw was smoke. She called 9-1-1 and raced home.
Read more from Kayla, in her own words:
Alexa helped me save my house from burning down. In the middle of a busy day of running errands, I dropped off at home a few boxes from the grocery store and ran out to my next destination. About 15-20 minutes later, I was across town when I received a notification from Alexa Guard within my Alexa app saying our Echo devices had detected a smoke alarm sound in our home. Puzzled, I clicked the small sound clip attached to the notification and sure enough our fire alarm was going off.
Upon realizing the alarm was ringing, I dropped in on our Echo Show in the kitchen to get a look and saw nothing but smoke. At that point, I called 9-1-1 and rushed home. The amazing firefighters ran in, thankfully stopping the burning boxes and all was saved. It turns out, when I dropped off those boxes earlier, I wasn’t thinking and threw a couple on my glass top stove before rushing out the door to my next errand. Little did I know: When I pushed the boxes back, I slightly moved the knob to the stove and turned it on.
You see, I had no intention of being home for at least 2-3 more hours. If it wasn’t for Alexa, we would have never known of the fire until returning home much later. Even after five more minutes, we would have experienced much more damage. One could only imagine what a few hours could have done. Alexa notifying me of the smoke alarm saved our family home and I am forever grateful. Following the incident, we went and bought an Echo for every single room in our house and we feel much safer!
After all was said and done, my mother-in-law asked if my security system alerted me to the fire, to which I informed her that no, it was Alexa that saved our home. Our family are now customers for life and will continue to recommend these products to everyone we come across.
We are incredibly happy that Kayla and her family home are okay, and Alexa was able to help. Learn more about our free Alexa Guard feature, which helped Kayla keep her home safe, or upgrade to Alexa Guard Plus for more offerings.
If you have a story of your own about how you use Alexa, we'd love to hear it and will continue sharing some of our favorite #AlexaStories. You can email us or tag us on Twitter or Instagram @alexa99 or #AlexaStories.
