Download 1999 Annual Report (pdf) (2.2 M)

Smoke alarms were known to be present in four of seven fatal residential fires. However, only one alarm was reported to be working. In all but one of these deaths, then, a working smoke alarm was not present in the dwelling. All of these fires occurred in single family dwellings, and four were in mobile homes. See Figure 9: Fire fatalities by age group. The source of the fire included children playing with lighters in two events, faulty wiring in one event, a cigarette in the trash can in one event, a candle left burning in one event and two events were undetermined. One event involved the victim lighting himself on fire (suicide). In four cases a caretaker was present, in one event the caretaker was at a neighbor?s house and in another event children were left unsupervised. Fifty percent (5) had contact with AFS prior to their deaths, and 40% (4) of the children were known to SCF prior to their deaths.

Recommendations to Prevent Fire Deaths

• Increase public awareness of new legislation requiring smoke alarms to have a "silencing" feature to reduce disabling due to nuisance alarms and an extended life battery to reduce the incidence of dead batteries.
• Encourage families to replace existing battery-operated smoke alarms with alarms with 10 year batteries.
• Continue the promotion of changing batteries in traditional smoke alarms twice a year.
• Engage SCF and AFS in efforts to educate their client families about maintaining working smoke alarms, and replacing smoke alarm batteries regularly and during home visits.

Examples of current safety initiatives

• 1998 Oregon smoke alarm law: all retail sales of smoke alarms must have 10-year batteries and a hush feature which eliminates the practice of removing batteries after a nuisance alarm (cooking smoke or steam).
• Fire department smoke alarm distribution programs.
• Juvenile fire setting intervention programs.