Jenna Castellano

Staff Writer

Jenna Castellano lives in Tampa, Florida with her husband, three kids and a detector on nearly every ceiling, which is roughly what happens when a kitchen fire scares you badly enough. She is a mother and a homeowner, not a fire marshal, and she is upfront about that. Her credentials are fifteen years of running a household where somebody is always leaving a burner on, plus the Red Cross and county emergency-management classes she took after her second hurricane season. She covers smoke and carbon monoxide alarms, water leak sensors, fire extinguishers and escape ladders, home safes, child safety and emergency preparedness for BeSafe Home Security. Gulf Coast living shapes all of it. Hurricane season means her real test of a security system is what happens when the power goes out for three days and cell service gets spotty: which sensors keep reporting, which hub has a battery that genuinely lasts, which camera is a brick without Wi-Fi. Florida humidity and salt air handle the durability testing for free. She writes for the person standing in an aisle with a toddler on their hip trying to decide between two boxes, because that was her.