From Our Fire House to Your Home

One year ago, our department initiated a proactive fire safety campaign designed to ensure that all county residents have working smoke alarms in their homes.

How, you might ask, would we be able to accomplish our goal? Simple! By going directly to your home!

Every Saturday afternoon, the women and men of MCFRS go to various neighborhoods in their communities knocking on doors, handing out fire safety information, and offering to check resident’s smoke alarms. If you are in need of a new smoke alarm or just a new battery, we will install them for FREE! If you are not home you will find a little something on your door knob (look to right of this article) letting you know we were by with a list of safety tips and a number to call if you would like us to stop by your home on another day to check your alarms.

What we have found is we are actually going into roughly 20% of the homes whose doors we knock on. Of that, roughly 50% of those homes do not have a working smoke alarm! The good news is that they will before we leave!

Why is it important to have working smoke alarms in your home? About two-thirds of home fire deaths occur in homes with no smoke alarms or no working smoke alarms and they can reduce your risk of dying form a fire in your home by almost half!

Here are some updated numbers from our door to door campaign through the end of November:

Homes Visited: 31,417

Smoke Alarms Installed: 972

Batteries Installed: 1119

So there are about a couple of thousand homes in Montgomery County that are now a little bit safer as a result of our program! Do not wait for us to stop by your home. Take a moment now to “Put A Finger On It” and test your smoke alarms to make sure they are working!

Stay Safe,

Bill Delaney
Program Manager, Community Safety Education