Hot Dog: HomePod saves home and pooch from housefire

AppleInsider

Apple's HomePod saved a family home from a potentially fatal fire, caused by a very curious dog.

A dog caused a fire in Colorado Springs. A HomePod helped alert homeowners to it. [CSFD]

On June 26th at 4:43 a.m, the Colorado Springs Fire Department was called out to attend a housefire. However, on arrival, they discovered a fire in the kitchen had already been extinguished by the homeowners.

In a video posted to Facebook, the CSFD shows security footage from inside the room, showing that the fire was caused by the owner's dog. The curious dog got on his hind legs to investigate the boxes on a stove top.

It accidentally turned on one of the heating elements below the boxes, and walked away.

Later, on the camera feed the stove top is shown to be on fire. Flames reached the ceiling.

One homeowner was taken to a local hospital over smoke inhalation. No other injuries to humans nor dogs were reported.

While unusual in its creation, the fire was thwarted earlier than it took fire crews to arrive in part because of the HomePod. The homeowners say they were alerted by a critical notice on their Apple devices, allegedly warning of "high heat."

It is more probable that the notice was actually part of a feature introduced in early 2023. The feature uses onboard microphones on the second-generation HomePod and the HomePod mini to listen out for smoke and CO2 detectors, triggering an alert on user devices.

The CSFD advises that this serves as a reminder to have working smoke alarms inside and outside every sleeping area, and on every floor of the house. Also, to ensure all combustibles are away from your stovetop or oven, and always know at least two ways out of every room in the event of a fire.



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gilly33

Pretty damn awesome. Would have been a tragic lost of life. I myself check the stove everytime I leave the house. No pets so any slip ups would be mine. Technology working the way we want it too work. 

baconstang

Why would someone leave flammable materials on top of ANY stove?

anonymouse

Obviously, the HomePod was trying to save itself.

Flappo

Siri is siri ously awesome 

jayweiss

baconstang said:

Why would someone leave flammable materials on top of ANY stove?

Stupid people. 

AppleZulu

baconstang said:

Why would someone leave flammable materials on top of ANY stove?

This is apparently a common thing, using the stove as a shelf. There is even a business that sells bespoke wooden ‘toppers’ via Amazon, to place on top of your stove to make it a better shelf if your gas or electric burners aren’t flat enough for you. 

During the pandemic lockdown, an acquaintance posted photos online showing how she’d turned her kitchen into an office, including computer hardware placed on her glass-top stove. I pointed out the potential for burning down her house, and she thanked me, saying it had never occurred to her. 

So perhaps the HomePod fire alarm alert can indeed save the day, as long as you don’t put the HomePod on your stove. 

dewme

AppleZulu said:

baconstang said:

Why would someone leave flammable materials on top of ANY stove?

This is apparently a common thing, using the stove as a shelf. There is even a business that sells bespoke wooden ‘toppers’ via Amazon, to place on top of your stove to make it a better shelf if your gas or electric burners aren’t flat enough for you. 

During the pandemic lockdown, an acquaintance posted photos online showing how she’d turned her kitchen into an office, including computer hardware placed on her glass-top stove. I pointed out the potential for burning down her house, and she thanked me, saying it had never occurred to her. 

So perhaps the HomePod fire alarm alert can indeed save the day, as long as you don’t put the HomePod on your stove. 

AppleZulu said:

baconstang said:

Why would someone leave flammable materials on top of ANY stove?

This is apparently a common thing, using the stove as a shelf. There is even a business that sells bespoke wooden ‘toppers’ via Amazon, to place on top of your stove to make it a better shelf if your gas or electric burners aren’t flat enough for you. 

During the pandemic lockdown, an acquaintance posted photos online showing how she’d turned her kitchen into an office, including computer hardware placed on her glass-top stove. I pointed out the potential for burning down her house, and she thanked me, saying it had never occurred to her. 

So perhaps the HomePod fire alarm alert can indeed save the day, as long as you don’t put the HomePod on your stove. 

The stovetop as storage thing was the very first thing I noticed when I first saw this video. It’s mind boggling that anyone would ever consider this as being acceptable. 

Maybe it’s a generational thing because I still remember when all gas stoves had lit pilot flames on all burners and you learned from a very young age that the heating coils on electric stoves were always a threat. I think the younger generations have become very clueless about pretty much anything mechanical or even electrical other than their cellphone chargers. 

With things like LED lighting there’s probably a large segment of the population that has no idea about how to change a lightbulb. This redefines all the “How many <fill in your stereotype> does it take to change a lightbulb?” jokes. 

Computers are getting smarter at about the same rate as humans are getting dumber. We’ll soon need AI for our own survival. 

AppleZulu

dewme said:

AppleZulu said:

baconstang said:

Why would someone leave flammable materials on top of ANY stove?

This is apparently a common thing, using the stove as a shelf. There is even a business that sells bespoke wooden ‘toppers’ via Amazon, to place on top of your stove to make it a better shelf if your gas or electric burners aren’t flat enough for you. 

During the pandemic lockdown, an acquaintance posted photos online showing how she’d turned her kitchen into an office, including computer hardware placed on her glass-top stove. I pointed out the potential for burning down her house, and she thanked me, saying it had never occurred to her. 

So perhaps the HomePod fire alarm alert can indeed save the day, as long as you don’t put the HomePod on your stove. 

AppleZulu said:

baconstang said:

Why would someone leave flammable materials on top of ANY stove?

This is apparently a common thing, using the stove as a shelf. There is even a business that sells bespoke wooden ‘toppers’ via Amazon, to place on top of your stove to make it a better shelf if your gas or electric burners aren’t flat enough for you. 

During the pandemic lockdown, an acquaintance posted photos online showing how she’d turned her kitchen into an office, including computer hardware placed on her glass-top stove. I pointed out the potential for burning down her house, and she thanked me, saying it had never occurred to her. 

So perhaps the HomePod fire alarm alert can indeed save the day, as long as you don’t put the HomePod on your stove. 

The stovetop as storage thing was the very first thing I noticed when I first saw this video. It’s mind boggling that anyone would ever consider this as being acceptable. 

Maybe it’s a generational thing because I still remember when all gas stoves had lit pilot flames on all burners and you learned from a very young age that the heating coils on electric stoves were always a threat. I think the younger generations have become very clueless about pretty much anything mechanical or even electrical other than their cellphone chargers. 

With things like LED lighting there’s probably a large segment of the population that has no idea about how to change a lightbulb. This redefines all the “How many <fill in your stereotype> does it take to change a lightbulb?” jokes. 

Computers are getting smarter at about the same rate as humans are getting dumber. We’ll soon need AI for our own survival. 

I don’t think this item is a generational ‘the kids these days’ thing. One could hypothesize that stoves-used-as-countertop-space could be more frequent as a secondary effect of people eating out more and cooking less. A stove used daily for cooking can’t be used for storing stuff for very long. It is not, however, just these dumb kids who are eating out more often. It’s pretty much across the board.