After String Of Fatal Fires, Mass. Officials Urge People To Check Smoke Alarms

The state's top fire safety officials are urging people to check the batteries in their smoke alarms or install the devices following a string of fatal blazes in homes without functioning alarms.

Fire Marshal Peter Ostroskey said Friday that 28 people have died in house fires in Massachusetts since Dec. 1. In about 60 percent of those cases, there were no working smoke alarms in the home.

Nineteen people have died in house fires already this year, including two little girls in Orange last weekend. The home's smoke alarms didn't work.

"While we don't have a commonality in the causes, we do see a common thread in the lack of working smoke alarms in these homes," Ostroskey told WBUR.

Ostroskey says when people change their clocks this weekend they should replace the batteries in their smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors.

With reporting by The Associated Press and the WBUR Newsroom