Dee has lived in her house since 1965. She was about 26 when she moved into her house. Over the years you get comfortable with your house. You know your house. There are things the house tells you and you get to know ever part of it and how to use it. You tend to do the things you always did as a young person. You forget that you get older.
Dee was having a birthday party for a grand daughter and they were putting balloons up on the lights. The sturdy old oak pedestal table was used to climb up to the lights, just like it had always been used. This time it over balanced and Dee was pitched over the open stairway and fell to the bottom. She's lucky to be alive.
It made me stop and think about risky situations and places in my house. I'm historically a risk taker. It was time to take a sober look at things.
The first thing that came to my mind was a smoke detector at the top of my stairs. The smoke detector had been placed so that it was above the second step down. So as you changed a smoke detector battery, not only were you on a step ladder at the top of the stairs, you had to lean out over the stair well. That's the point at which I said ,"This risk has to be eliminated."
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| The two screw holes show how far I moved the smoke detector so that it wasn't over the stairs. |
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| Look way up and see the tiny little smoke detector |
So I learned something out of Dee's tragedy.
I hope others will look around and change risky situations or behaviors.
