Ronald Reagan

“ Sunday, October 30, 1988, is the day on which Americans in jurisdictions on Daylight Savings Time must turn their clocks back 1 hour to Standard Time. That offers all of us an excellent opportunity to do one other thing simultaneously-replace our smoke detectors' batteries and then test every detector. ”

“ The vast majority of the more than 6,000 fire fatalities in our land each year occur in fires in the home. Smoke detectors are a simple and economical way to prevent needless deaths in fires, because they can alert people and allow them to escape during the early stages of fires. Most American homes have at least one fire detector, but nearly half of these life-saving devices are inoperable at any one time because their batteries are dead or missing. We must all remember that we can avert tragedy by taking a few seconds to replace smoke detector batteries and to check our detectors' operation. ”