Fiscal Year 2023 Fire Prevention and Safety

PROJECT DESCRIPTION The Kentucky Injury Prevention and Research Center (KIPRC) proposes a project to install smoke alarms in low income, high risk homes in Kentucky (Ky) that lack smoke alarms. This project is modeled on our previous CDC-funded smoke alarm installation / fire safety education projects and our prior successful FEMA FP&S projects. Overview: KIPRC will purchase long life, lithium-battery powered smoke alarms and fire safety education materials. KIPRC will partner with local fire departments and other organizations (e.g., local health depts., senior citizens'' programs, home health visiting programs, Safe Communities groups, etc.) and provide training and technical support to the local partners'' staff, who in turn will make direct contact with residents of low income, high risk households. Residents who need and accept smoke alarms will have alarms installed by a project team member. Financial Need: Target communities are those with high percentages of low-income households. Many residents in these communities lack the resources to purchase and properly install smoke alarms for themselves and rarely have access to fire safety information. High unemployment, low tax bases, volunteer fire departments with little or no local tax funding, and numerous other needs mean that no local funds are available for residential smoke alarm programs. Vulnerability: A lack of working smoke alarms is a key factor in Ky''s high fire fatality rate. About 60% of residential fire deaths occur in homes without working smoke alarms. The NFPA found the death rate per 100 reported home fires was more than twice as high in homes that did not have any working smoke alarms compared to the rate in homes with working smoke alarms. Prior KIPRC surveys have found the percentage of homes with working smoke alarms to be as low as 23% in some communities; 21 of 27 communities surveyed had alarm use rates below 70%. Implementation Plan: Smoke alarms are highly effective at preventing deaths and serious injuries due to residential fires. Smoke alarms are most effective when combined with education and escape planning. The project goals are to (a) install long life smoke alarms in 1,000 low income homes in Ky that lack working smoke alarms, with at least 50% of those homes also being high-risk homes, and (b) provide fire prevention / fire safety education and home safety checks for residents of those homes. Specific objectives (and target dates, expressed in days after project start date) are: (1) Purchase 4,800 smoke alarms and printed fire safety educational materials (60 days); (2) Partner with at least one local organization in each selected community and provide training and technical support for each such organization (120 days); (3) Conduct door- to-door canvassing, supplemented by other methods, to identify at least 1,000 low income homes in need of smoke alarm installation (330 days); (4) Install an adequate number of smoke alarms, as defined by NFPA standards, in each home identified, with a total installation of 4,800 smoke alarms (360 days); (5) Provide home safety inspections to each project household during the smoke alarm installation visit, and provide a record of any safety issues identified to the resident(s) (360 days); (6) Provide fire prevention and exit drill education to the residents of those homes (360 days); (7) Collect and analyze data to insure that alarms are being installed and to evaluate the effectiveness of the project by comparing the number of homes served to project objectives (390 days); and (8) Submit final project report (395 days). KIPRC will partner with fire departments and other local agencies (e.g. public health depts.) in the project communities. The KIPRC project director will coordinate the project at the state level, assist local agencies with project planning, analyze process data and monitor progress, and submit required reports. The director and fire prevention specialist will provide initial training for alarm installers, assist in door-to-door canvassing and alarm installations, provide technical assistance, and coordinate the collection of evaluation data. Local partner organizations will provide the majority of the personnel time required for door-to-door canvassing, household recruitment, and smoke alarm installation / home safety inspection / fire safety education. This methodology will make essential resources (training, smoke alarms, home safety surveys, fire safety education materials, and technical support) available to fire departments and other service agencies working in low income communities while reducing the federal cost for the project. This method has been used with great success in Ky. Previous, similar projects have resulted in a total of over 38,000 smoke alarms installed over two decades, with 98 documented individuals who have been notified of fires by project smoke alarms. Evaluation: We will evaluate the effectiveness of this plan based upon the number of smoke alarms installed, the number of homes in which those alarms are installed, and the number of residents that receive fire safety education. We will work with our local partner organizations to identify any fires that occur in project homes for at least three years following alarm installation, to determine if the alarms worked properly. Cost-Benefit: KIPRC and local partners have previously installed over 38,000 smoke alarms. In that period, at least 98 people were warned of fires by our smoke alarms. If we assume that half of those individuals would have escaped even without an alarm, we are left with 49 lives saved, or one life saved for every 776 alarms installed. By installing 4,800, we can reasonably expect to see at least 5 people warned - and 2 or more lives saved - by those alarms. Prior evaluations have found that lost wages alone average over $500,000 per fire fatality. That amount, for one fire-related fatality, is twice the amount of federal funding requested.