When it comes to daylight saving time, many welcome the opportunity to “fall back” time one hour, but the time to “spring forward” and lose an hour is on the horizon.

March 12 at 2 a.m., residents will move their clocks one hour forward in observance of daylight saving time.

According to About.com, daylight saving time was created to allow people to use less energy in lighting their homes due to longer daylight hours, but the Selma Fire Department is also using the time to raise awareness and potentially save some lives in the process.

“We do try to encourage people to—each time the time changes springing forward or falling back—go ahead and change their batteries when they change their clock,” said Selma Fire Chief Mike Stokes.

Stokes said the hope is to attach the changing of smoke detectors with daylight saving time because people usually don’t remember to keep the detectors in working order.

“We’re basically tying into the time change, which everybody in the state of Alabama does participate in,” Stokes said. “It’s just a great opportunity while we’re thinking about the time change on Saturday or Sunday, we can say ‘oh yeah, let’s not forget about those smoke detectors and let’s get them wiped down, get the dust off of them and change the batteries.’”

Stokes said the guidelines for making sure you have a working smoke detector is to keep it clean and making sure it’s not too old.

“Smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors, it’s just one of those things that takes a battery in everyone’s home that, unfortunately, gets forgotten about,” Stokes said. “It’s something that’s just not on everybody’s mind everyday, so we use these two times to encourage people to take the smoke detector down, wipe it off, clean it, check the date of manufacture.

“If it’s over ten years old we encourage them to replace the whole unit, and if it’s less than 10 years old then we encourage them to pop that nine-volt battery out and put a new one in.”