Free Smoke Detector Distribution Lags in Rural Areas

They’re among the most effective lifesaving devices a homeowner can have, cutting the risk of death from a fire nearly in half.

But rural communities — where people are at greatest danger of dying by fire — usually lack programs for free distribution of smoke alarms, a new federal report says.

The report advises rural fire companies to partner with churches, senior centers, civic leaders and health-care workers to help prevent fire deaths in America’s smallest communities.

The report funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s U.S. Fire Administration aims to reduce fatalities in rural communities of less than 2,500 people, which have a fire death rate twice that of larger population centers.

Many such communities are poor and depend on volunteer fire departments, researchers from the National Fire Protection Association found. Only 20 percent of those companies give away free smoke alarms, compared to 70 percent of fire departments serving communities of 100,000 or more.

The researchers looked at government-funded projects that have installed thousands of smoke alarms in poor, rural communities in the Southeast and Southwest. They found that a key common denominator was the involvement of local groups, civic leaders and volunteers.

One model is Holmes County, Miss., where volunteers installed nearly 9,000 smoke detectors in the two years after a trailer fire that killed six children in Tchula in October 2002.

Margaret Wilson, the project’s paid coordinator, said about two-thirds of the nearly 90 volunteers were firefighters. The rest were people she recruited through newspaper ads, flyers and talks to groups, including retired teachers and law-enforcement officers. The project ended with smoke alarms in 95 percent of the county’s households.