By Pat Kondas, American Red Cross of Colorado and Wyoming Public Affairs
Recently, The American Red Cross of Wyoming installed smoke alarms in 46 Senior Housing apartments in Wheatland. Because of Covid, the event was carried out differently from usual Sound the Alarm events.
According to Disaster Program Manager Libby Case, “Typically, we work directly with tenants and install the alarms ourselves, but in this case, we worked directly with the senior public housing management to get the alarms installed. It worked out great!” Their maintenance person installed the alarms and Libby presented the fire safety education program to the tenants in two large group presentations.
Response from Senior Housing residents and management was positive. Housing Manager Deanna Brant said, “I think the Sound the Alarm program is great. We always think about installing smoke alarms and checking them. However, we hardly ever think about following up with training. We had several residents that were impressed with the presentation. Some of them came away with new ideas.” Deanna said the program is “a good fit for our complex and backed up a lot of emergency situations that we already had in place.”
Response from Senior Housing residents and management was positive. Housing Manager Deanna Brant said, “I think the Sound the Alarm program is great. We always think about installing smoke alarms and checking them. However, we hardly ever think about following up with training. We had several residents that were impressed with the presentation. Some of them came away with new ideas.” Deanna said the program is “a good fit for our complex and backed up a lot of emergency situations that we already had in place.”
Despite difficulties caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, the Red Cross of Wyoming responded to 67 house fires between July 2020 and June 2021, assisting almost 170 adults and children. This doesn’t count the eleven other incidents – flooding, hazardous materials, and other incidents – that volunteers assisted with. The Sound the Alarm program aims to help prevent or reduce the number of home fires, or in the event of a fire, give people the knowledge and training to escape with their lives.
There are currently no definite plans to do installations, but there will be more events and installations in the future. People can sign up and get on the list when installations start again by calling 307-222-1120.