In Wake of Sassoon Tragedy, New Canaan’s Fire Marshal Urges Smoke Detector Checks

After a malfunctioning hotplate last weekend sparked a fire that killed seven children in Brooklyn, ages 5 to 16, fire officials in New Canaan are urging residents to make sure they’re taking safety precautions. The Sassoon children— girls Eliane, 16, Rivka, 11, and Sarah, 6, and four boys, David, 12, Yehoshua, 10, Moshe, 8, and Yaakov, 5—had been sleeping in their bedrooms on the second floor of a home whose only functioning smoke detector was in the basement, investigators say. “Regardless of the cause, this was a preventable tragedy,” New Canaan Fire Marshal Fred Baker said in a press release. “You may say this can’t happen to me. Can it?