By: Gordon William, Northwest Region Volunteer

The Red Cross has installed more than 2.5 million smoke alarms since it first launched its life-saving Home Fire Campaign in 2014. The aim of the program is to slash home fire deaths by putting alarms in homes that don't have them. In fact, the Campaign has saved over 1,500 lives nationwide since its inception.

The action side of the Home Fire Campaign is Sound the Alarm (STA), a short-term, intense drive to put alarms in targeted locations. STA23 (Sound the Alarm for 2023) runs from April to May in the Northwest Region. During that period, teams of Red Cross volunteers will fan out throughout the area and install alarms where needed.

Concentrated efforts will take place in a few higher-risk neighborhoods, with special emphasis on mobile home parks. The signature city for this year's Northwest Region is Yakima, Washington.

Michele Roth, executive director of the Red Cross Central and Southeastern Washington chapter, which includes Yakima, tells us why. “Yakima has the highest home fire rate of any county in Washington state,” she says. “In the last two years we responded to four fatal home fires in this community. Two-thirds of fire deaths occur in homes without working smoke alarms. Having working smoke alarms can actually cut the risk of death in half.”

In just a single week in late January, the Red Cross responded to four home fires in Yakima County: three in Yakima City and one in Union Gap.

Hannah Christen, STA preparedness coordinator for the Red Cross Northwest Region (Washington and north Idaho) explains that the choice of Yakima as a focus city goes beyond just the frequency of home fires. It is based on data modeling on the risk of future fires, the risk of fire death and injury, the level of homes that lack smoke alarms and the poverty rate. (The poverty rate is 20.4% in Yakima County against 9.8% for the average Washington county).

As to why the Red Cross is putting special emphasis on mobile home parks, the numbers speak for themselves. For one thing, figures from the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) show that fewer mobile homes have working smoke alarms than traditional fixed-location dwellings.

Home fire deaths kill an average 2,200 people each year. According to NFPA figures, you are 55 percent less likely to die in a home fire if you have a working alarm than if you don’t.

When fires occur in a mobile home, they are likely to burn faster and do more damage than a fire in a traditional home. Mobile homes are made of lighter materials than traditional dwellings -- materials that would burn quickly in a fire. After all, mobile homes are meant to be portable -- able to be moved from place to place with a minimum of effort.

For an on-scene report of how fire evolves in a mobile home, look no further than this May 2021 report of a fire in Yakima. The reporting is from news site Yaktrinews.com. The fire consumed a double-wide mobile home, with five residents requiring assistance from a Red Cross Disaster Action Team. “By the time first responders arrived, the mobile home was fully involved,” says the news report. Fire then spread to trees on the property, and it took considerable effort by firefighters to keep flames from spreading to other dwellings.

There is still another reason why mobile homes pose a heightened fire risk -- that often low-functioning built-in heaters make it more likely that dwellers will turn to space heaters to keep warm when the weather turns chilly.

A site called Mobile Home University comes down hard on the prevalence of space heaters in mobile homes. “The colder season invariably includes mobile home fires,” says the site. “The culprit? Space heaters. It’s just a reality that many residents elect to use space heaters, even when homes are not designed for them.”
You can reduce the risk of fire by following the rules of space heater safety. Never run a space heater within three feet of something that might burn. Always turn off the heater when you leave the dwelling or go to sleep. And, most important of all, only use a space heater that has an automatic kill switch -- one that automatically shuts down when it is tipped over.

Still, following fire safety rules to the letter is no guarantee that you are 100 percent free from the risk of fire.

The same Red Cross teams that install smoke alarms will also provide lots of Red Cross preparedness material. Do apply the preparedness rules to your own situation and give yourself an extra measure of safety by adding a working smoke alarm to your home defenses. 

Remember, nearly three in five home fire deaths occur in homes that lack a working smoke alarm. A key word there is "working". Check the "test" feature every month to make sure the alarm is working properly, never remove batteries from a smoke alarm for some other use, even though you fully intend to replace them as soon as possible. The alarms installed by Red Cross volunteers have a special 10-year battery that cannot be removed until it is time to install a new alarm.

Everything about Sound The Alarm is free -- the alarms, installation and preparedness material. For more about STA and home fire safety -- whether you want alarms installed or want to volunteer to join a Red Cross STA team, go to redcross.org/nwhomefire.