Smoke detectors soon to become obligatory in France

A quick pass-on of an article I read on French Property News about a new French law being introduced to make smoke alarms mandatory. The article explains that over 800 people die today in France due to smoke and fire-related incidents and currently only around 1-3% of all French homes have smoke alarms.

According to the results from a couple of quick Google searches I did, there's somewhere between 85% and 96% of UK and US homes that have a smoke alarm so you can see why the French government is so concerned about this issue.

I'm happy to be able to say that our French Gite has a fully working smoke alarm, it was one of the things I felt we absolutely must install before we let it out to guests.

As well as the smoke alarm we've also fitted a fire extinguisher in the kitchen, a second extinguisher at the top of the stairs, and a third much larger fire extinguisher next to the open fire in the lounge. Although it cost a lot of money for all these fire safety devices the old maxim "better safe than sorry springs to mind" and fortunately neither us nor the guests have ever had need of any of them.