Why We Built GetVibeAlert

It started with a fire in our own kitchen.

Last year, a fire started in our kitchen late in the evening while my wife was already sound asleep. I was just getting ready to go to sleep when I noticed something smelled odd. I got up to check — and when I turned the corner, I couldn’t see the other side of the house because it was filled with smoke.

When I reached the kitchen, the microwave and cabinets above it were in flames — and the fire had already spread to the wall and ceiling.

I grabbed the fire extinguisher and put out the flames, then rushed to wake my wife — who was still sleeping even though the smoke alarms were going off. When I asked her later, she said she thought she heard them but fell back asleep. As someone with a hearing impairment myself, I didn’t hear a single alarm — even though I walked right past two of them on my way to the fire.

That experience made one thing clear: standard smoke alarms aren’t enough for everyone. For the deaf and hard of hearing, for deep sleepers, for children, and for older adults — a beeping alarm alone can fail when it matters most. Standard smoke alarms operate at frequencies that many people with hearing loss simply cannot detect, even at full volume.

GetVibeAlert is our answer to that problem. It’s the system I wish we’d had that night.