Clocks Fell Back at 2 A.M. in New York: The Extra Hour Is Here — and Fire Officials Say Use Ten Minutes of It on Your Alarms

It happened while the city slept: at 2 a.m. Sunday, daylight saving time ended and New York's clocks went back to 1 a.m., repeating the hour and putting the city on Eastern Standard Time. Phones changed themselves; the stove, the car and the wall clock are the ones to check this morning — on the same morning the marathon takes the streets and early voting opens for its final day.

Fire officials use the clock change as the year's alarm reminder, and the guidance is short. The U.S. Fire Administration says every smoke alarm should be tested monthly by its test button, and that an alarm with a dead or missing battery is the same as no alarm at all. The National Fire Protection Association reports that almost three out of five home fire deaths happen in homes with no smoke alarm or no working one.

What to do depends on the alarm in the ceiling. Alarms with replaceable 9-volt batteries, and the backup batteries in hardwired alarms, should get a fresh battery at least once a year. In New York, any new or replacement alarm sold since April 1, 2019 must have a sealed, non-removable 10-year battery or be hard-wired, under the state Department of State rule — a sealed unit that chirps is not asking for a battery; the whole alarm is replaced. Every smoke alarm, whatever its battery, is replaced ten years from its manufacture date, printed on the back.

Carbon-monoxide alarms get the same ten minutes: test them monthly, keep them outside each sleeping area and on every level of the home. The sun now sets before 5 p.m. in New York — Sunday's sunset is the earliest-feeling of the year — so the dark walk home starts this week, and the alarms checked this morning are the ones standing watch over all of it.