Organizations team up to install smoke alarms

DYER, Tenn. — The Tennessee State Fire Marshal’s Office teamed up this weekend with volunteers from the Dyer Fire Department and Boy Scouts of America to install free smoke alarms in residential homes.

The smoke alarm installation program is known as “Get Alarmed Tennessee!” and is administered by the Tennessee State Fire Marshal’s Office.

“Smoke alarms can be one of the most important pieces in terms of preventing fire deaths,” Community Risk Reduction Coordinator Alex Daugherty said.

Vanessa Hartsuff is a resident of Dyer whose home caught fire last year. She was alone in the home at the time. She says she suffers from hearing loss and owns a deaf smoke alarm.

“When the smoke alarms in the house go off, my smoke alarms react to them,” Hartsuff said. “It picks up the noise and it flashes, it beeps, and it shakes a little device that is sitting under the edge of my bed.”

She says if it wasn’t for the smoke alarm, she wouldn’t have made it out of the burning house.

“It definitely saved my life. I wouldn’t have known, so I was definitely scared to death,” Hartsuff said.

The program has been going on since 2012. It has distributed over 200,000 smoke alarms throughout Tennessee.

“Especially this time of year — when it gets cold, we have a lot more fires in Tennessee,” Daugherty said. “Tennessee ranks in the top 10 in terms of fire deaths and has for quite some time.”

Daugherty says they visited a hundred homes Saturday to install smoke alarms.

If you need a smoke alarm installed in your home, you can contact your local fire department.