Why Daylight Saving Time Is a Winter Safety Reminder

This Sunday, November 1, clocks across New Brunswick fall back an hour as Daylight Saving Time ends. Most of us think of it as an extra hour of sleep. Fire departments and safety organizations across the country use the same weekend every year to remind households to do one simple thing: change your clock, change your batteries.

It’s a good habit, and this year it lines up with something else worth paying attention to: heating season. As temperatures drop across the Quispamsis–Saint John area, furnaces kick in, wood stoves get lit, and space heaters come out of storage. All of that is normal, and all of it raises the risk of carbon monoxide (CO) exposure in the home.

Carbon Monoxide Safety: What Every Household Should Know

CO is colourless, odourless, and impossible to detect without an alarm. It’s produced whenever fuel burns, in furnaces, wood stoves, generators, and vehicles, and it builds up fastest in enclosed spaces with poor ventilation. That’s exactly what a closed-up New Brunswick home looks like in November. Early CO exposure can feel a lot like the flu: headache, dizziness, nausea, confusion, fatigue. Because the symptoms are so easy to write off, a working CO alarm is the only reliable early warning.

If you or someone with you starts showing these signs and you suspect CO, get everyone outside into fresh air right away, call 911, and don’t go back inside until emergency responders say it’s safe. If someone becomes unresponsive and isn’t breathing normally, start CPR and keep going until help arrives or an AED is available. Breathing-related emergencies are exactly why Heart & Stroke’s current Canadian CPR guidelines put renewed emphasis on rescue breaths alongside compressions. The same reasoning applies here, since CO poisoning affects breathing and oxygen delivery much like drowning or choking does.

Your Winter Home Safety Checklist

While you’re testing alarms this weekend, it’s worth doing a quick pass on the rest of your household’s emergency readiness heading into the darker, colder months:

• Test every smoke and CO alarm in the home, and replace the batteries even if the alarm seems to be working.
• Check your first aid kit. Restock anything used over the summer and toss anything expired.
• Make sure flashlights have working batteries. With earlier sunsets, you’ll want them within reach.
• Talk through your family’s emergency plan: where to meet outside if an alarm goes off, and who calls for help.

First Aid and CPR Training: Be Ready for an Emergency

It’s also a good time to think about your own skills, not just your equipment. Red Cross guidance recommends renewing First Aid and CPR certification roughly every three years, and the move into shorter days and more time indoors together is a natural prompt to do it. AEMTS offers Standard First Aid, Emergency First Aid, and CPR courses right here in the Quispamsis–Saint John area, along with a Babysitting course that’s popular with families whose teens are home alone more as evenings get dark earlier. A few hours now means your household is ready before winter really sets in.

Is your First Aid and CPR training up to date?

AEMTS offers First Aid, CPR, and Babysitting courses in the Quispamsis–Saint John area to help individuals and families prepare for emergencies. Don’t wait until an emergency happens. Explore upcoming AEMTS courses and build the confidence to respond when it matters most.

Clocks fall back once a year. Make it the moment your home’s safety net gets checked too.