FULTON COUNTY, Ga. --
Atlanta firefighters went door to door this weekend asking their own Tough Questions.
"We are here to install a smoke detector. Do you have a smoke detector?" asked a firefighter to a homeowner.
Crews spent hours this weekend replacing counterfeit smoke detectors.
As a mother, Laura Arroyo was scared to find out her alarm didn't work.
"So we were kind of worried," Arroyo said.
A CBS Atlanta exclusive investigation uncovered the Atlanta Fire Rescue Department unknowingly handed out more than 18,000 fake smoke detectors.
Atlanta Fire Chief Kelvin Cochran said it took five years to install them into homes.
The Tough Question: How long will it take to replace them?
"Two and a half to three years is literally as fast as we can do it with the other duties and responsibilities that our firefighters have," Cochran said.
So far, just a couple hundred fakes have been replaced.
Another Tough Question: Why will it take years to replace them?
"We don't have addresses for every resident where we've installed a smoke alarm. What we do have is a record of all the neighborhoods that we have canvassed," Cochran said.
Currently, the department is armed with a just few thousand new alarms. Cochran said the remainder were coming with the help of a federal grant
"It's not going to be a problem for us getting the smoke alarms, but the challenge is the time it will take to get them recalled and redistributed," Cochran said.
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