On a sunny day in April in Madras, Oregon, 42 Red Cross volunteers and partners from Warm Springs Fire and Safety and Jefferson County Fire and Emergency gathered to spend a day installing free smoke alarms in the town and surrounding county. 

Smoke alarms are your first line of defense in the event of a home fire.   They can cut your risk of death in half. The statistics are staggering.  House fires kill seven people every day in this country and people have two minutes, on average, to escape in the event of a house fire.

Volunteers who came to the Jefferson County Health Department community center wearing their Red Cross vests and carrying their bucket of drills, screws, smoke alarms and documents know that. It’s what inspires them to come out year after year.

Volunteer Jack Crowell knows all about it too. He’s been doing this work for almost a decade which is about as long as the Sound the Alarm Home Fire Campaign has been in existence. He’s done this in Bend, Sisters, and several other cities as well. 

This one was especially impactful because the Red Cross went to Madras several years ago to install free smoke alarms and the program worked. Those alarms literally saved the lives of 4 people. 

On one occasion, it saved two teenagers.

“Two girls came home at night after a slumber party and were sleeping during the day. Their trailer caught fire, and nothing was left of it but the metal frame that it sat on. But, because of their smoke alarms, they got out safely and I got to meet them,” says Crowell.  “Is there any greater thing that you can be involved in?  I don’t think so. I don’t think so.”

Jefferson County Fire and EMS Deputy Chief Kasey Skaar has been a firefighter for almost 20 years and he, too, has seen the effects of a working smoke alarm. He looks forward to growing this program even more.

“Having your (Red Cross) teams going out is huge. It gives curiosity to other homeowners to look at their ceilings and ask, ‘Are MY smoke alarms working properly?’ and if they aren’t, hopefully they’re contacting the Red Cross or the fire department to fix it,” says Skaar.

If that sentiment doesn’t inspire you, perhaps these numbers will. After the day ended, The Red Cross team had installed 164 alarms in 64 homes.  Of those 64 homes, 17 had no working smoke alarms and 19 had no alarms at all. 

Crowell’s message to the team after the event: “Because of the safety education and alarms you installed the people of 36 homes have a much better chance of surviving a house fire.  A number you should all be proud of.”

About Sound the Alarm: The Sound the Alarm event is part of a national Red Cross initiative to install 50,000 free smoke alarms with partners in more than 50 at-risk communities across the country. Sound the Alarm events are a critical part of the national Red Cross Home Fire Campaign, which has helped save 2,320 lives since launching in October 2014, including 24 here in the Cascades Region. 

To learn more about the program, or to sign up for a free smoke alarm, go to RedCross.org/SoundtheAlarm.