Close calls and house fires aren’t a very good combination.
But one week before the Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service held on Jan. 18, one Midwest City family luckily found theirselves unscathed after a fire broke out in their home on Kittyhawk Drive.
Fire Marshall Tim Snyder said he doesn’t like to talk about fire incidents, but he just couldn’t shake the irony of this family’s situation in relation to the canvas event that would take place one week later.
He explained that no one was asleep when the fire occurred early in the evening, and thankfully only minor damage was sustained to the home.
After the flames were put out and the water hoses put up, Snyder said firefighters tested the smoke alarm in a room untouched by the fire. That is when they discovered that the often life saving device was not working.
If the clock would have been a few hours later, the end result could have been life changing if the family was sleeping when the fire started.
Snyder was eerily reminded of this fact as he sat with his radio telling firefighters which house to go to next during a canvas of homes in the Original Square Mile Saturday, Jan. 18.
"The situation could have been completely different," Synder said speaking of the house fire. "It was ironic, just the week before the canvas that this occurred in the same neighborhood."
The canvassing event, Snyder is referring to, included nearly 100 volunteers and firefighters sharing fire prevention materials, as well as checking and installing 50+ smoke detectors, in some 1,120 residences in the city’s oldest neighborhood.
The American Red Cross, HOPE worldwide and the Midwest City Fire Department teamed up to make the service day project possible and had set a goal to visit 1,000 residences.
The Original Square Mile neighborhood, which includes some 1,800 homes total, was selected for the canvas based on data collected by the Red Cross, Snyder said. As it turns out, the area has seen numerous fire events, in which afterwards, the Red Cross is called into assist families.
A total of 17 youth and 55 adult volunteers, and also two MWCFD companies helped in the canvas. Nearly 180 youth preparedness materials and 946 door hangers were passed out and 435 conversations were conducted.
Midwest City Fire Chief Jarett Metheny called the canvas an eye opener for the fire department in many ways. He said the Original Square Mile contains many young families in rental properties.
"We’ve been getting complaints from tenants about smoke detectors," Snyder said. "The problem is after people move in, for whatever reason, [the smoke detector] gets taken down or the battery does not get replaced."
No matter who a house is owned by, firefighters have a difficult time leaving a residence knowing there is not a working smoke detector, Snyder said.
As a result, the fire department is now talking about changing its smoke detector program.
"We are redoing the program," Snyder said. "The fire crews will start doing the majority of these [installations]. They will check the smoke detectors; it takes just a few seconds to check and it’s something that’s really easy to do."
If anyone missed out on the canvas event, volunteers and firefighters left a door hangar with more information. Residents are encouraged to contact the fire department at (405) 733-1340 if they are in need of a working smoke detector.
