Fire safety for kids at Meerkats11

Life Light Rescue could save your child’s life in a fire, that’s the pitch from inventor Derek Wilson. He came up with the idea of a flashing strobe light triggered by the incessant beeping of a smoke alarm while at a party with lots of dry ice and pyrotechnics.

“A friend was about to take a photo and I said the flash wouldn’t work through the indoor smog, when it did, the proverbial light went on,” he told me today at the Meerkats and Avatars technology event in Cambridge.

The device, which lasts three years on a single battery and then returned to the company for a refurb and a discount on the replacement, could be the biggest breakthrough in children’s fire safety since the smoke alarm. Wilson points out that children often hide under the bed or in a wardrobe when there’s a fire. The strobing light on the outside of their bedroom door frame acts a guiding light to firefighters searching for occupants often in the noisy, dark and smoky environment of a house fire. “Find the childs bedroom and you find the child,” says Wilson.

He added that the company also has a green flashing version of the light that could be secured to the inside of one’s front and back door to guide rescuers and the rescued from the house.

via Childrens fire safety – keeping children safe.