“Hear the Beep Where You Sleep” is the theme for this year’s Fire Prevention Week campaign.

This means that you can increase how safe your family is by installing a smoke alarm in each bedroom. This is extremely important because approximately half of home fires take place between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. – when most people are sleeping.

Current building codes require smoke alarms in each bedroom, but many older homes have smoke alarms only in the hallway outside the bedrooms.

Hallway smoke alarms may not be loud enough for those sleeping to hear – especially if people sleep with their bedroom door closed as is recommended.

Closed bedroom doors help protect people from smoke and help to limit its spread. Unfortunately, it also muffles this potentially life saving alert.

Fire Prevention Week is held during the week that contains Oct. 9, commemorating the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 which killed as many as 300 people and destroyed over three square miles of the city.

For more information on how you can keep you family safe, go to http://www.nfpa.org/safety-information/fire-prevention-week.