A Tuscaloosa fire chief and others are trying to make a difference in the state of Alabama when it comes to the high number of fire fatalities.
By Caroline Petrey
Contributing Writer
TUSCALOOSA —Chief Alan Martin looked on solemnly as black smoke rose up from the remnants of a house into the thick summer air, making it harder and harder to breathe.
For the past few hours, his firefighters had worked to extinguish a fire that ravaged a home in their city. The firefighters had been successful in putting out the flames, but their victory was bittersweet.
Inside the home, the fire had destroyed everything from antique furniture to family photographs and even lives. A grandmother and her granddaughter had been trapped inside, unable to escape the flames that surrounded them. They had been found dead on the scene.
Martin wondered how the fire had started. Had they been cooking something on the stove together and left it unattended? Had they forgotten to blow out a candle?
As the crew continued to inspect the remains of the charred house to find the cause of the fire, Martin realized something small, yet important was missing—a smoke detector.
There had been no shrill alarm to alert the grandmother and her young granddaughter that their house was on fire. Instead, they probably didn’t know until the last minute that their house had started filling up with smoke—smoke so thick that they couldn’t find their way out to safety.
Martin sighed in a mixture of frustration and sadness. If only there had been a smoke detector in the house, he thought, then these two people might still be alive. It all could have been prevented.
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Last year alone, over 3,000 people died from fire fatalities in the United States, and approximately nine people died each day from house fires.
The state of Alabama has the highest amount of fire fatalities in the nation, with over 62 fatalities since January 2015, said Martin, who has been the fire chief of the Tuscaloosa Fire and Rescue Service since 2002 when he moved from Birmingham.
“The main causes of fires nationwide are unattended cooking, improper disposal of smoking materials and using alternate heating sources,” Martin said. “This is absolutely true in Alabama as well.”
Martin said another reason people die in fires in Alabama is because they either don’t have working smoke detectors or they don’t have one at all, like the grandmother and her young granddaughter that were killed just this summer.
“You would think that in this day and age everyone would have a working smoke alarm,” Martin said. “You can get one for $25 that will last for years, but there are still a lot people out there who don’t have them.”
Martin said chances of surviving a fire increase by over 50 percent when there is a working smoke detector in a home.
Along with the American Red Cross, the Tuscaloosa Fire and Rescue Service has been installing free smoke detectors for people in need for the last 10 years.
Beakie Powell, the executive director of the West Alabama chapter of the American Red Cross, said a group of volunteers made up of Tuscaloosa and Northport firefighters, as well as volunteer firefighters from Tuscaloosa County, go door-to-door and ask if they can install smoke detectors in homes around the region. They also change the batteries in working smoke detectors.
“Fires are one of the most common disasters in the country, and we deal with them on a day-to-day basis,” Powell said. “The American Red Cross, in partnership with the Tuscaloosa Fire and Rescue Service, is aiming to reduce deaths and injuries in house fires by 25 percent over the next five years.”
The American Red Cross recently installed 62 smoke detectors in homes across Central Alabama, including Tuscaloosa.
In 2014, Allan Rice, the executive director of the Alabama Fire College, and other fire chiefs in the Alabama Fire Chief’s Association helped to create the “Turn Your Attention to Fire Prevention” campaign. The Association hopes that the campaign will bring awareness to how dangerous and life-threatening house fires can be.
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Martin doesn’t go out to fire grounds very often anymore. As the fire chief, his job is mostly running the department from an administrative standpoint and being a leader to the young firefighters, whose shoes he was once in over 40 years ago when he first joined the fire department in Birmingham.
Although he isn’t out physically fighting fires, Martin is fighting a larger battle—one that can make a huge difference in the state of Alabama.
Martin is passionate about making a difference not only in the way Alabamians treat fires, but how many fire fatalities there are in the state.
“Alabama fire chiefs have to take responsibility for leading the charge to change the behavior of the citizens,” said Martin, who was awarded Fire Chief of the Year in 2014 by the Alabama Association of Fire Chiefs, the Southeastern Association of Fire Chiefs and the International Association of Fire Chiefs. “If the fire chiefs don’t think this is bad, then no one else will either. It’s our job to protect lives and fire prevention is part of that.”
Looking toward the future, Martin dreams that one day Alabama will have zero preventable fire fatalities.
“We had four fire fatalities in Tuscaloosa this summer,” Martin said. “I believe that all of them could have been prevented.”
The Tuscaloosa Fire and Rescue Service is one step closer to realizing that goal. They were recently awarded a fire prevention grant from FM Global, an insurance company that specializes in loss prevention. The $3,500 grant will go toward assisting with fire investigations and will help investigators more efficiently discover the causes of fires so they can be prevented more easily.
“This can’t be done overnight,” Martin said, “but we’ve got to do it.”