Don’t wait for Fire Prevention Week—invest in prevention education now
By Jane Jerrard

Fire Prevention Week is, obviously, just one week out of the year. While departments can reverse fire trends and create many positive outcomes out of spreading fire prevention education throughout the year, Fire Prevention Week is a great time to start, expand or review an effective community program—a program that has instant and positive results.

Here’s an example: During Fire Prevention Week 2008, the New York City Fire Department (FDNY) partnered with Meals on Wheels – Staten Island to get their fire prevention message into the homes of nearly 700 homebound elderly residents. Meals on Wheels, which normally delivers two meals a day to this population, also delivered smoke alarm batteries, fire safety literature and an FDNY mini-flashlight.

Home Visits: An Inside Job
This example encapsulates a popular and extremely effective way to use fire prevention, according to Philip Schaenman, president of System Planning Corporation’s TriData division (Arlington, Va.) and an expert on fire prevention education. “So far, the most effective means of public education is sending firefighters to high-risk homes to check whether the smoke detector is working, replace batteries if necessary, and provide education that’s targeted to the household,” Schaenman says. Secondarily, departments can train organizations like Meals on Wheels to help with this, as FDNY did last year.

When planning a home-visit program, it’s crucial to prioritize which elements of your community need it most, and visit those households first. “Every fire department knows who their high-risk populations are,” Schaenman states. “Who’s having the most fires per capita? They’re typically low-income, elderly or people with disabilities. They may be recent immigrants who don’t know how to work appliances.”

Dallas, Texas, followed this model when initiating a massive smoke detector-installation blitz. “We coordinate through our Injury Prevention Department,” says Debbie Carlin, Dallas’s fire marshal. “They help identify the neighborhoods; we send them our fire statistics, and they pull injury data from hospitals on fire injuries and then overlay that with population data on age and income level to come up with the areas we should hit.” Using this data, teams of on-duty firefighters, fire inspectors and community volunteers have installed 31,518 smoke detectors in Dallas residences over the past 6 years. During that time, fire fatalities have dropped from 18 in 2002 down to 11 last year. “My goal is to get us down to zero fire fatalities,” says Carlin.

Success Takes Time
Regardless of whether you start a similar program during Fire Prevention Week, in order to see results from visiting at-risk homes, your department must make a long-term commitment.

“You have to focus on a specific problem or issue for probably 3 to 5 years in order to see changes in behavior,” says Mike Love, fire marshal for Montgomery County, Md. “That’s what we’ve planned.” Carlin agrees: “It’s the longevity of the program that makes it work.”

Love explains that the majority of fire deaths in his community were senior citizens. His department put together a task force, which created a 2-year plan based on Schaenman’s reports on fire prevention education, which has firefighters going door-to-door visiting seniors. They have created a full-time position to coordinate senior issues, and plan to keep the focus on fire prevention in this population.

The English Example
Great Britain is devoted to permanent programs like this, that both teach fire prevention and evaluate at-risk homes. “England is way ahead of us in this. While we’ve improved our prevention efforts, they’ve seen a 40 percent decrease in fire deaths in the last decade,” Schaenman reports. “They’re going into homes with firefighters on a large scale. For instance, Merseyside Fire Brigade has been to 50 percent of homes in their community this year. They install 10-year, tamper-proof detectors, examine the house and give tailored information to residents.” British fire departments also educate professionals who routinely visit homes—social workers, Meals on Wheels-type organizations, visiting nurses and other caregivers. These professionals are trained in fire hazards and at-risk factors to watch for, as well as how to check smoke detectors; they report any problems to the local fire department.

“Australia has carried this even further,” Schaenman says. “Their social workers must have fire safety education as part of their certification.” He summarizes, “Other nations have changed the role of the fire department. In these tight budget times, they’re getting more with less.” As these nations educate their high-risk citizens and proactively check residences, they are reducing the number of fires (and of fire deaths and injuries) and thus reducing the number of emergency responses.

For more information on what other countries are doing—specifically, what they’re doing right—download Schaenman’s recent global reports.

Plan Now for Fire Prevention Week
In 2009, Fire Prevention Week will take place October 4–10, 2009; the week is always observed on the week including Oct. 9—the date of the Great Chicago Fire and the lesser-known but more destructive Peshtigo Fire in northeast Wisconsin.

“There are a lot of good directions to go” when planning activities for Fire Prevention Week,’ says Jim Crawford, fire marshal with the Vancouver (Wash.) Fire Department and author of Fire Prevention: A Comprehensive Approach (Brady, 2001). “If I had a bias, it would be toward something that has demonstrated effectiveness.” Crawford’s Fire Prevention column in FireRescue magazine offers information and ideas on proven prevention methods. “Don’t give up on education,” pleads Crawford. “In fact, do what you can to enhance it.”

Like the FDNY, your department can partner with the local Meals on Wheels, or with church groups—or you can simply identify the high-risk homes and go door-to-door yourselves.

“Fire Prevention Week is a great marketing tool for fire departments around the country,” says Carlin. “But fire prevention is a 365-day-a-year job. We get a lot of requests for education for that week; it’s a great time to showcase what you’re doing for the community.” Start now, and by October you could have something to brag about.

Jane Jerrard is a freelancer writer living in Chicago.