Download to PDFModule 5: Smoke Alarm Installation Program
One of the greatest impacts your department can have on the fire safety of your citizens is ensuring every home is protected by a properly operating smoke alarm. The easiest way to accomplish this is to establish a Smoke Alarm Installation Program. This program will have an impact in several areas. One, you should check the smoke alarm in every home where you respond to an incident. Two, you should establish a smoke alarm request process for citizens. Three, your department should target areas in your community that have been identified as having a higher incidence of fires and fire injuries.
Your department should work with local funders to provide smoke alarms to be installed by your organization throughout your community. These smoke alarms should become a standard piece of equipment carried on all of your apparatus, available for needed installations at each home you respond to, as well as available for request and during targeted installation campaigns.
Introduction
One of the greatest impacts your department can have on the fire safety of your citizens is ensuring every home in your community is protected by properly operating smoke alarms.
While this may seem to be an impossible task, it is surely a logical goal for your organization to reach for. The information in this module will help guide you through the steps required to establish a Smoke Alarm Installation Program or, in many cases, augment an already successful program currently used by your department.
The foundation of this process starts with a change in philosophy, which must be modeled by the organizational leadership. Bottom line: the program must be supported by the leadership and should be carried out by the entire membership. A successful smoke alarm program not only provides a high level of protection against injuries and deaths due to fires, but also protects the lives of your firefighters. Each time your department is called to respond to an emergency, each of your members is exposed to the risk of being injured or killed performing their duties. Each time a smoke alarm alerts a family to an incipient fire, the likelihood of the department having to respond is greatly reduced, which in turn significantly lowers the danger of injury to and death of our citizens and firefighters. The amount of property damage caused by fire incidents can be reduced as well.
To start this life safety journey, there are several key areas your department should consider to successfully implement a new program or improve an existing program:
- Program Development
- Program Marketing
- Program Delivery
- Program Record Keeping
- Program Sustainability
As you work through each of these key areas, you will find many example documents, which your department can use “as is” or customize to its needs. Working templates for the various examples are also available in the Appendix Module.
The templates in this document are generic in nature and do not represent any particular organization. We urge your department to have the final copy of any document you use as a process, procedure, or guideline should be reviewed and approved by your Executive Staff. Your organization’s legal department, should also review any liability forms that will be executed between your department and members of your community.