Three Lives Saved By Smoke Alarms Installed By The American Red Cross
By Mary Jo Blackwood, American Red Cross Public Affairs
Too often, we hear heartbreaking stories of people who had a fire in their home and were unaware of it, resulting in injury or death. Many of these fires occur at night when people are sleeping. Either they didn’t have smoke detectors or the batteries were dead or missing. The good news is that this doesn’t have to happen. Changing that reality is what the American Red Cross is trying do with our Sound the Alarm initiative.
The Roman family’s home fire story is the perfect example of how important working fire alarms are and how critical Sound the Alarm is in our communities. On May 24, 2019, the Red Cross of Southeastern Colorado visited the home of Joseph Roman, his mother and roommate during a Sound the Alarm event. Red Cross volunteers installed three smoke alarms in the home.
On January 21, 2020, Roman, his mother and roommate were on the lower level of their home when one of the smoke alarms that the Red Cross installed went off upstairs. He responded and discovered the stove was on fire. While his roommate was on the phone to the Fire Department, Roman grabbed the fire extinguisher to put out the blaze. The pin broke off and he couldn’t use it and suffered some minor burns on his chest. So the fire department was summoned and he got all three of them out of the house. As a former firefighter, he knew the importance of having a plan for evacuating everyone. That situation could have had a different outcome, had the fire escalated because no smoke alarm alerted them.
We’ve all been awakened by the annoying chirp of a smoke detector, signaling the failure of the battery. It seems like it always happens at night. But that chirp tells us that we have an important life-saving device in our home that can be the difference between life and death
Although it is tempting to just remove the battery to shut off the chirping, we would be making a grave mistake. The American Red Cross reminds you to check your smoke alarm twice a year. Many people put it on their calendar to replace smoke detector batteries on daylight savings time, twice each year. That way, you can avoid the chirp and sleep easy.
During this winter season people spend more time indoors, the risk of home fires increases. Power outages due to severe weather events may prompt people to resort to fireplaces and space heaters to stay warm. Those risks, defective wiring, or cooking fires are some of the reasons fire departments respond every year.
Staying safe under those circumstances is an important Red Cross goal. Since October 2014, The Red Cross’s Sound the Alarm program has been educating people on fire safety, and partnering with other organizations to install smoke alarms and replace batteries in existing ones. Sound the Alarm is making millions of households in high risk neighborhoods safer by:
- Installing smoke alarms
- Replacing batteries
- Helping families devise a fire escape plan
- Completing a fire safety checklist for the residence.
As of December 2022, across the U.S., this program has saved over 1,400 lives that we know of, in more than 18,000 towns and over a million households. Approximately 2.4 million smoke alarms have been installed. Home visits were made to 2.7 million households, and over 95,000 batteries have been replaced. Because the program is so successful and has such an enthusiastic volunteer support, it continues to impact even more communities.
So, check your smoke detectors. When were the batteries last replaced? Do you know how to get out of the house if one way or another is blocked by flames? Have you taken every step you can to make your home fire safe? If you need help with any of those, talk to your local Red Cross, and you, too, can avoid the dreaded midnight chirp!