Red Cross Installs Peace of Mind for a Deaf Woman Displaced by an Apartment Fire
Written by Rebecca Marshall, Regional Communications Director
On September 17, 2025, Heather Fenner was sleeping on the couch when she woke up to the smell of smoke and saw flames outside her apartment. She was able to grab her son and some of her pets and get out just in time. Her apartment, along with many others, was destroyed.
She was able to find a new apartment near her father, but the fear that another fire could break out, and that she would not know until the last minute, stayed with her. Her father said, for days, she couldn’t sleep.
“She hasn’t gone inside her bedroom since and at least with the bed shaker and strobe lights she’ll be able to go back inside her room.”
Three weeks later, two Red Cross volunteers, the same volunteers who were there on the morning of the fire, came to bring Heather some peace of mind. They installed a strobe system in her living room and a bed shaker alarm in her bedroom.
The bed shaker alarm looks like an alarm clock next to the bed. When it senses smoke, it will sound off, announce there’s a fire, (in both English and Spanish) and send a signal to a small device under the mattress. That device will start to vibrate, awakening the person in the bed.
After taking time to educate Heather about home fire safety, and planning an escape plan, it was time to test the device. When volunteer Roman Perez pushed the button on the dvevice, it started to vibrate, and tears flowed down Heather’s cheeks. “This is amazing,” Heather says, “I needed this.”
There wasn’t a dry eye in the apartment. Speaking through an ASL interpreter on the phone, Heather said,
“Now I can actually sleep in my own bed at night because I’ll feel so much safer. […] I don’t know how to say thank you enough.”
Across the country, the Red Cross installs approximately 2,300 accessible fire safety equipment every year, bringing peace of mind to others who also may not be able to hear. According to the CDC, 3.6% of people in the United States, or 11-million people are deaf or hard of hearing.
If you want to learn more about the Red Cross smoke alarm installation program, click here:
The story grabbed the attention of a local news outlet, KGW. You can see their coverage of this story here: https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/deaf-woman-new-safety-devices-red-cross-surviving-aloha-apartment-fire/283-0790ae74-fced-4e6f-b17e-380a3b0f0561