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Children, Elderly Targeted by Fire Prevention Program
By Trish Hollenbeck, The Northwest Arkansas Times
February 22, 2009
Children and the elderly are most at risk when it comes to fires, says a local fire marshal.
That is why John Jenkins, fire marshal for Washington County, is using grant money from Wal-Mart to hire a part-time fire safety educator primarily to visit day care and senior community centers, as well as senior groups and other events for older residents on a weekly basis.
"Wherever we can reach people," Jenkins said.
A child under age 5 is twice as likely to die in a residential fire than the rest of the population, according to information from the U.S. Fire Administration, which is part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
"Young people don't know what to do," Jenkins said. "Sometimes they haven't been trained in what to do."
The idea is to train and duplicate the training until fire safety becomes automatic, Jenkins said.
Older adults are 2.5 times more likely to die in fires than the overall population. As Americans age, their fire risk increases, according to a report, "Fire and the Older Adult," from the U.S. Fire Administration and National Fire Data Center from January 2006. Predominant causes of fires in which an older adult was killed are smoking, open flame, heating and suspicious acts. Cooking, open flames, smoking, and heating caused more fires that resulted in injuries among the elderly than other fire causes.
With older people, Jenkins said, "it becomes a situation where they have maybe a little harder time getting out of where they need to be."
He said complacency also can play a role.
"When nothing's happened for years and years, you just kind of tend to let your guard down," he said.
Smoking and kitchen fires, he said, are some of the biggest causes of fires, and many people do not know how to extinguish kitchen fires.
"Throwing water on a grease fire is like throwing gasoline on it," he said.
"You don't quit trying," he said of fire prevention, because people are still dying from not having smoke detectors, due to candles and generator problems.
"If everybody knows it, they're not practicing it," he said.
Space-heater education is a key part of prevention for older people, he said, because "elderly people are more likely to have more space heaters."
He said the recent ice storm opened some eyes about dangers inherent in space heaters and other devices to heat homes.
He said he suspects a lot of recent fires are directly due to the ice storm - be it because of issues with generators or candles or space heaters.
Flue fires are also big culprits, according to Jenkins.
People who go a long time without using their flues may find themselves using them one day, using whatever kinds of woods they can find, trying to burn them hot and in devices that have not been cleaned or inspected.
Generators are good things, if used properly, but they are made to operate outdoors, he said.
"I like them out, away from the house, where they're wellvented," he said.
"The ice storm was a big wake-up call for a lot of things," he said. "It caught a lot of us off guard."
Grant funding
Jenkins' plan is to hire someone who will focus primarily on teaching fire safety to the young and old until the grant money is depleted. The position probably will last nine to 12 months.
The Washington County Quorum Court last week recognized an additional $1,000 in revenue for the Fire Marshal Grant Fund. The money will be appropriated to the fire marshal's budget and will be part of an overall $4,400 collected in Wal-Mart grant money over the past four years.
"I think we can reach the most people with the most good with this money," Jenkins said, adding that he appreciates Wal-Mart supporting what his office tries to do.
"Their money is allowing us to push our fire safety agenda," he said.
He said staff in his office are still working on details of the program to target day care centers.
"We're going to try to go to every day care in the county," he said.
"We have an inspection program we do on day cares. We haven't necessarily done an extensive amount of fire safety programs."
He said the targeted ages at day care centers are 4 and 5.
One thing to avoid with young children, he said, is fear.
"You can train a child without terrifying them. That's the line we kind of draw," he said.
The staff already takes a trailer to every school system in the county except for Fayetteville and Springdale for older children to receive fire safety education.
When visiting with school children, staff provide information to take home so it "kind of helps in retraining the parents," he said.
"We also do other events. We'll do church groups," Jenkins said. "We'll do fairs, festivals, wherever we're requested, pancake breakfasts."
As for the program for older people, he said, "There's lots of information out there for elderly people."
Much of it is review on smoke detectors and other common prevention measures.
The program for both age groups will get under way some time in March, Jenkins said.
"We'll make it happen quickly," he said. "We're ready to go."
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