BATON ROUGE — Fire officials in Baton Rouge say that now is a good time to check your smoke alarms, especially as temperatures dip below freezing.

The Louisiana State Fire Marshal says that this year, 82 people have died in 63 house fires, and only two of these homes had working smoke detectors. 

On Monday, WBRZ spoke with the Baton Rouge Fire Department, who urge people to check smoke detectors once a month. 

"I think it's just something that slips our mind, something we don't think about all the time. We kind of operate under the assumption it's not going to happen to us, but guess what. Everybody who has a fire thinks that it's not going to happen to them," BRFD spokesperson Justin Hill said. "Smoke detectors save lives. We think that we will be able to wake up if there's a fire in the night, but a lot of the time that doesn't happen, and unfortunately, people do lose their lives because they weren't alerted to that fire in their home."