By John Heuvelmann, American Red Cross

The American Red Cross has a well-known history of helping people cope with and recover after disasters. But the Red Cross Sound the Alarm initiative, as part of the Home Fire Campaign, prevents disasters from occurring in the first place.

Sound the Alarm is a multi-faceted program that provides:
 

• education about fire prevention in the home
• awareness of how to survive in the event of a fire, including home escape plans
• plans for dealing with other disasters that might impact the community
• installation of home smoke detectors free of charge
• testing of existing smoke alarms

Trained Red Cross volunteers, in cooperation with local fire departments and other community resources, make in-home visits to provide the free service. More than 2.5 million households throughout the United States have received these services since the program began in 2014. In addition to in-home visits, the program conducts virtual sessions for the public.

Every day in the United States, seven deaths occur as a result of home fires. Home fires are the fifth leading cause of unintentional injury and death in the country and are the leading cause of death for children under age fifteen at home. Prevention of fires is a year-round focus of the Red Cross, and during one month in the spring and one month in the fall, the Red Cross actively targets selected communities to provide these services. Working with local fire departments and civic leaders, they determine neighborhoods where there have been a high concentration of fire calls or where local resources to respond to fires are not as readily available. In some cases, a neighborhood where a fire fatality has occurred will be targeted.

Sound the Alarm teams walk the neighborhoods, knocking on doors and engaging with the residents. Free smoke alarms are installed in homes that don’t have them and existing ones are replaced if needed. Red Cross volunteers provide education to those who live there including how to create home fire escape plans and how to set up a meeting point for the family after an event has occurred. The main focus of Sound the Alarm is fire detection/prevention/reaction, but Red Cross volunteers also provide education and make residents aware of available resources related to other disasters that might occur. In the Missouri-Arkansas region, these include tornadoes, floods and earthquakes.

In addition to the neighborhood sweeps by the Sound the Alarm team, residents can request an in-home visit by the Red Cross to install smoke alarms and provide the educational program at a time convenient for them. This can be scheduled through the Red Cross website. Awareness that a Sound the Alarm event is happening is created through flyers distributed in the targeted neighborhoods, through community announcements and local media coverage.

These smoke alarm installations are well received by the community, and it is a chance for the Red Cross to help citizens avoid disasters — a much happier prospect than providing assistance after a disaster has occurred. Residents are provided free smoke alarms, as well as a working knowledge about how to get help within the community if a disaster should occur. This makes for a more resilient community in which the effects of disasters are reduced.

The results of the Sound the Alarm initiative over the years speak for themselves. Since 2014, more than 2.5 million alarms have been installed nationwide and more than 1 million households have been made safer. Most importantly, we have documented more than 2,200 lives saved over the course of the Home Fire Campaign.

If you’d like to schedule a Red Cross Sound the Alarm visit to make your home and family safer, go to http://www.redcross.org/sound-the-alarm.