City Launches Operation Install to Reduce Home Fire Deaths
New campaign targets group at highest risk of home fire fatalities

Firefighters stand ready to install smoke   detectors in the home of every senior citizen as two City departments team up with local social service agencies for a new campaign to prevent home fire deaths. Operation Install: Change each Spring and Fall is a joint collaboration of the San Antonio Fire Department (SAFD) and the Department of Community Initiatives (DCI) aimed at creating awareness of free smoke detectors and installation available through SAFD. It also calls on citizens to ensure the life-saving devices are working by replacing the battery when Daylight Savings Time begins and ends.

“Just during the first two months of this year, five people in our community have died as a result of fires in the home. Three of those victims were seniors,” said District 4 Councilman Richard Perez. “These deaths are occurring despite the fire department’s ongoing initiative to install free smoke detectors. So, we are intensifying our efforts.”

Nearly 22,000 donated smoke detectors are available for installation. Request forms, in English and Spanish, are at all City-sponsored senior nutrition centers and San Antonio fire departments. They also are available on the SAFD and DCI websites at www.sanantonio.gov/SAFD or www.sanantonio.gov/comminit. Citizens also may call 211, the United Way helpline, to make a request by phone.

DCI is leading the outreach effort with partnering agencies that will have the request forms available and assist seniors in completing them as well. Those agencies include: United Way of San Antonio, Catholic Charities, Alamo Area Council of Governments/Bexar Area Agency on Aging, Christian Senior Services, and OASIS. The Joint City/County Commission on Elderly Affairs will assist Operation Install by providing information outreach through community-based events.

The smoke detectors are being donated by local attorney Wayne Wright, who committed to donate 26,000 detectors to SAFD earlier this year. Firefighters have already installed 4,000 of the donated devices. During the past four years, SAFD has installed more than 10,000 smoke detectors in the homes of seniors and other residents of all ages. Many of them were made possible through financial and product donations.

According to the U.S. Fire Administration, an estimated one-quarter of homes in America do not have smoke detectors or have detectors that are not in working order due to a missing or dead battery. This scenario increases the risk of fire death by 50%. Locally, since 1998, one in three residential fire deaths were seniors.

For more information, call 207-7172.