Don’t forget to “fall back” and check smoke detectors this weekend.
On Sunday, Nov. 7 at 2 a.m., time will revert back to standard, giving everyone an extra hour to sleep in.
Since 2007, the time change has reverted to standard time on the first Sunday of November and changed to daylight savings time on the second Sunday of March.
Hence the phrase, “Fall back, spring ahead” to help people remember which way to turn their clocks during what season.
Daylight savings is also a good reminder for people to check smoke alarms in their residences to ensure they’re working properly.
Energizer and the International Association of Fire Chiefs, or IAFC, are partnering to encourage families to change the batteries in smoke alarms and CO detectors, a task that doubles a family’s chance of surviving a home fire, according to a news release by the program.
“The habit of changing batteries during Daylight-Saving Time is an easy task that can be the difference between life and death,” Chief Jeffrey D. Johnson, president of the IAFC, said in the release.
A home fire death occurs approximately every three hours in the United States, killing 540 children each year, according to data from the National Fire Protection Association.
Ninety-six percent of families in the U.S. have smoke alarms, but 19 percent of the detectors do not work, Johnson said. A smoke alarm provides extra time for people to escape a fire so it crucial that batteries are changed often.
Prior to 2007, daylight savings time in North America began on the first Sunday of April and concluded the last Sunday in October.
The change to extend daylight savings time by one month was proposed in a small section of the 551-page Energy Policy Act of 2005 in the United States’ Congress. The act targets energy efficiency and was signed into law by former U.S. President George W. Bush.
(David Livyoson – YWN)
Join the official YWN WhatsApp status
5 Responses
Only in the USA
How is it that Israel and the United States are the only countries who juggle times based on dubious religious considerations (as in, I like the extra hour to get home before Shabbos, but it is a bit too late in the morning before one can daven).
The current US law was designed to facilitate the observance of Halloween (All Saints Eve) where the goyim go door to door collecting candy, and they wanted them to have more light, which makes as much sense as Israel ending DST early so Yom Kippur will be shorter????
akuperma:
It is for two different reasons. In the US, parents are now so paranoid about letting their children out of the house that they will only let them go out during light. From my understanding, though, this upsets the original mood of their observance; I live in a neighborhood where the practice is widespread and young people make a point of wearing spooky costumes, which are only spooky at night. Unfortunately, it has meant that we were egged once (perhaps because we were not giving out candy), but on the whole it seems to me to be much more fitting for this door-to-door candy collecting (“trick-or-treating”) to occur just after nightfall.
In Israel DST timing woes have nothing to do with parents’ paranoia; the reason is that certain voting blocs wanted to have an hour less of YK afternoon.
Another version to remember which way to move the clock is “fall behind, spring forward.”
the reason the religious were so interested in making yom kippur shorter was not for the religious themselves rather to make it easier for the lesser religious to adhere to the mitzva of fasting.