Safety company finds modern homes burn faster

FORT MYERS, Fla.- Fancy features, the latest designs and everything upgraded is what makes a modern day home so nice.

Many of you probably think a brand new home is the way to go, but firefighters tell WINK News, new constructions actually burns faster.
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WINK News obtained brand new information by Underwriters Laboratories (UL), a safety consulting company. It shows new homes burn eight times faster than older homes built before the mid-1980s. That lowers your escape time to only 2-3 minutes.

“Burns faster, burns hotter,” said division chief Vincent DiCristofalo with the Fort Myers Fire Department.

Dicristofalo tells WINK News, modern houses are built with lighter and cheaper products that can act like match sticks.

“They are taking wood chips, pressing them together, so a fire would attack that wood and weakens the adhesiveness, which creates collapse situations for us,” said Dicristofalo.

A demonstration by UL shows a modern room can be completely engulfed in flames in less than 4 minutes and an older room, nearly 30 minutes.

“All the materials these days are synthetic in nature,” said fire safety and training consultant Michael Heeder.

Heeder says modern furniture also adds major fuel to the fire.

“Thick styrofoam material and this material is what causes not only fires to grow quickly, but also produces a lot of poisonous gasses,” said Heeder.

That’s why firefighters say smoke detectors are your first line of defense.

“You need to have at least one smoke detector on every level of the home,” said Heeder.

“You don’t want to leave candles near the Christmas trees, near the holiday decorations that are going to catch fire,” said Dicristofalo.