Smoke detector uses in a typical residential dwelling are suppose to send alarm throughout the dwelling if fire or smoke is detected. But to no avail this is not what is happening. In my career of servicing thousands of homes I would say 65% of homes I serviced in America do not have the correct smoke detectors in place. This problem is mainly in 20 years old or older homes.
When cooking greasy food burnt smell is almost always the result and the smoke detector goes into alarm mode with very loud beeps. When this happens the detector is many times disconnected and never gets reconnected again. Because of this many more fires go out of control.
Fire departments see this and have City fire Marshalls in place but lack of enforcement has led to more severe problems. Some fire departments have put programs together to go into homes and just check for simple fire alarms. Federal Grants are in place in major cities taking care some of these problems. But too many homes are already out of touch due to the lack of education on causes of fires and most likely never have correctly installed smoke detectors.