Facing down funding challenges and a pandemic that halted his manufacturing, Stamford inventor Marc Toland has reached agreements with several large retailers to carry his unique fire safety invention.
“We”™re working with Amazon, Walmart, Brookstone and Lowes,” he says of the Christmas Tree Alarm that”™s been nine years in the making.
It was Christmas Eve 2011 when Toland and his family were awakened by sirens as firetrucks raced to a nearby home. By the time the sun rose on Christmas Day, three little girls and their grandparents were dead, the house where they had been sleeping reduced to a pile of ash and debris.
“After that night, it became my personal crusade to raise awareness of fire safety and to bring life saving products to market,” he said.
Though the devastating 2011 Stamford fire wasn”™t a Christmas tree fire ”“ the cause was actually improperly discarded fireplace ash ”“ Toland”™s research unveiled some staggering statistics. Most notably, every year in the U.S. firefighters respond to roughly 200 Christmas tree fires, and that the death rate is more than four times that of a house fire.
Toland set out to counter that grim statistic with the ornament alarm.
“There is no fire alarm system that alerts faster and detects at closer proximity,” he said, adding that the sensor doesn”™t detect smoke, but heat. “The reality is, by the time you hear your smoke alarm go off, it may be too late to do anything about it. Our ornament is designed to detect fire right at the source.”
Once fire is detected, the ornament transmits a wireless signal to an alarm unit that can be placed in a safe location. The alarm sounds instantly and continuously to alert those in the home, even if the ornament sensor has melted.
Toland said that if his invention helps even one family this holiday season, the years of effort will be worth it.
“We need to prevent tragedies like these from ever happening again.”
The Christmas tree ornament retails at $49 and is available online through Amazon, Walmart, Brookstone and Lowes.
