Maryland`s “Operation Safe Home”: a community project
Some 600 firefighters from Maryland`s Eastern Shore canvassed neighborhoods in the nine-county area to check existing smoke detectors or install detectors free where there were none. Conectiv Services, a subsidiary of Delmarva Power & Light Company, and Lowe`s Home Centers donated 5,400 smoke detectors and thousands of nine-volt batteries for the project.
A result of their life-saving endeavors was evident that same day when a volunteer firefighter responded to a fire call at the home of a 75-year-old woman, in whose home he had installed smoke detectors that afternoon. Lightheaded and disoriented and with a house full of smoke caused by a malfunctioning furnace, she told the firefighters that the detectors went off about 15 minutes after they had left. She was treated at the hospital for smoke inhalation and released the same day. Had the detectors not been installed, she might have died of smoke inhalation or carbon monoxide poisoning.
According to Baltimore City Deputy Fire Chief Hector Tories, a similar program in the city of Baltimore cut the fire death toll in half. After installing 35,000 free smoke detectors over several years, he says, the fire-related death rate dropped from 50 each year–the average for the past 15 years–to 22 in 1996.
