Smoke Detectors Need Permanent Power
Re “Fire Kills Dad, 3 Young Sons,” Jan. 30:
Our building codes should, at the least, require the installation of permanently wired smoke detectors whenever a home is sold. Battery-powered smoke detectors with dead or missing batteries are no protection at all. Preferably, all homes should be required to have permanently wired smoke detectors by a certain date.
Oh, we couldn’t do that. It would cost too much, right? Somehow, I think the Ybarra family would consider it money well spent.
Arnie Bell
Huntington Beach
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I ate my breakfast with tears running down my face as I looked at the front page of the California section. There I saw the unspeakable grief of a grandfather whose three grandchildren and son-in-law had died in a tragic home fire. What a terrible invasion of privacy and act of pure unkindness to print such a picture of this man in his most intimate grieving moment.
I am so disappointed in The Times for printing such a picture. How can you be so insensitive? Can’t we weep without a camera in our faces?
Carol C. McMillan
Santa Ana
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