This week is Fire Prevention Week with this year’s campaign, “Smoke alarms: Make them work for you!”
The National Fire Protection Association says you should check your smoke alarms at least once a month and replace all smoke alarms when they are 10 years old or stop responding when tested. Iowa Falls Fire Chief Scott Eisentrager tells RadioOnTheGo News, along with checking your smoke alarms on a monthly basis, you need to have several installed in your home.
“Smoke detectors play a huge role in preventing major fires, preventing death. You should have one on every floor of your house at a minimum. And most of the new style smoke detectors come with a sealed 10-year battery in them, so it’s kind of taking the aspect of having to change your own batteries. So smoke detectors are a huge, huge safety concern in the fire service.”
While smoke alarms are the focus of this year’s Fire Prevention Week, the dangers of the warm, dry fall we are experiencing have been well documented. More than 50 counties in Iowa, including the entire RadioOnTheGo broadcast area, are under burn bans at this time. Eisentrager says his department has had to battle some field fires during the dry, fall harvest.
“We’ve seen a couple of field fires that, you know, we’re honestly started by a malfunction in the combine. So we’ve been pretty fortunate so far, but with the dry conditions, it’s something we’re on high alert for. Depending on the wind direction, we try to attack it from inside the already burnt stuff is the safest approach. I’ve been on field fires where we’ve had eight to 10 departments over the years. So you just try to get as many vehicles as you can out there safely. A lot of times, some of the local farmers will cut a fire break, you know, downwind from the fire just to try to stop it from burning. So it takes a lot of manpower, a lot of resources, and it’s probably, quite honestly, one of the most dangerous fires we deal with.”
Fire Prevention Week is observed each year during the week of October 9th in commemoration of the Great Chicago Fire, which began on October 8th, 1871.
