Whitfield County residents found themselves sleeping much better at night after June 2015. Thanks to a project by Safe Kids Dalton, The American Red Cross and the Whitfield County Fire Department (Safe Kids Dalton Lead agency), and with help from CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) – 474 smoke detectors and alarms were installed in homes throughout the area.
Those groups conducted a door-to-door drive along several local roads to install the alarms in local homes, with 222 installs on June 13th and 252 more on June 20th. M. J. Baker Scott, the disaster relief manager for the American Red Cross of Northwest Georgia, said a shocking amount of homes didn’t have any kind of smoke detector at all:
“A few batteries were switched out but very few compared to the number of homes which actually needed the alarms,” he recalled. “All residents received fire safety education, and roughly three-fourths received tornado safety education. Great job, everyone!”
Whitfield County Fire Department stations 1 through 10 targeted dozens of streets and neighborhoods in the area. The special effort was part of the American Red Cross Home Fire Campaign, which aims to save lives, reduce injuries and build more resilient communities through raising awareness, facilitating preventative actions, and fostering community participation.
The national goal is a 25 percent reduction in home fire deaths over the next five years. Since the national campaign began in October, at least seven lives have been saved as a result of residents being alerted to a home fire by campaign-installed smoke alarms.
Smoke detectors for your own home can be purchased at Home Depot, Lowes, Walmart, Amazon, and more.
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