THE Christmas Day fire that killed five people, including three children, in Stamford, Conn., has sent many homeowners scrambling to check their own safety equipment.
“We had a run on fire extinguishers like you wouldn’t believe,” said Marc Fogel, the owner of Karp’s True Value there. Customers who were unnerved by the episode were also eager to buy smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, as well as escape ladders, he added.
“This is what shocks me: people who tell me that they don’t have any smoke alarms,“ Mr. Fogel said.
Lisa Stamatin, a manager at Keough’s Hardware, described a similar rush.
Initial reports suggested the fire was caused by improperly discarded fireplace embers, which The Associated Press reported this week were removed so the children wouldn’t worry about Santa Claus coming down the chimney.
Fire experts issued reminders that it is unnecessary to remove embers right away. “There’s no need to,” said Tom Olshanski, a spokesman for the United States Fire Administration. “Fireplaces are designed to handle embers and burning wood.”
Embers, he said, posed a bigger risk outside the fireplace because they still might be hot enough to ignite a flame long after the fire has died. “The golden rule is, 24 hours after the fire, the embers will be cool enough to take out,” Mr. Olshanski said, adding some new research suggested waiting three days.
After a fire has gone out, fireplace doors or metal mesh screens should be closed. He also stressed that chimney flues should be inspected annually, especially in older homes, because a flammable substance forms as brick and mortar deteriorate.
A more expensive safeguard — one growing in popularity — is a residential fire sprinkler system.
“Residential sprinklers, we know, are the next evolution,” Mr. Olshanski said.
In Scottsdale, Ariz., half of the city’s homes are equipped with these systems, the result of a rule change in 1986 governing new-home construction.
“In the first 15 years, we cut our fire fatalities in half,” said Jim Ford, deputy chief and fire marshal of Scottsdale. And in the last 25 years, there has been only one death from a fire in a sprinklered home.
Prince George’s County in Maryland enacted similar legislation in 1992, with similar benefits. The fire department said that nobody had died from a fire in a home with a sprinkler system, compared with more than 100 people who died in fires in homes without them.
“I think everyone genuinely agrees that sprinklers can help save lives in fires,“ said Brian J. Meacham, an associate professor in the department of fire protection engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts. He said the larger debate was over the cost of installation and whether it should be voluntary or mandated by law.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency says the systems cost roughly $1.60 per square foot to install in new homes. That means the additional cost for a new home of an average size of 2,400 square feet would be about $3,800.
“My understanding is retrofitting costs at least twice that in new construction,” said David T. Butry, an economist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology who studies the advantages and disadvantages of residential sprinklers.
Mr. Olshanski said he believed homeowners should take any steps they could to guard against life-threatening fires. “We believe, in the fire service, that all fires are preventable.”