CETA Funds, Trainees Are Used In Countywide Smoke Detector Drive
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Fire Prevention in Action
Personnel of the Erie County, N.Y., Department of Fire Safety have long anguished over the number of deaths caused by fires each year. After a fire in the Village of Lancaster, N.Y., in late 1977, in which four members of a family died, followed by another fire that killed five children in the Town of Boston in 1978, it was decided that a definite program should be developed to make the public aware of the dangers of a fire in the home. Administrators reasoned that while it would be impossible to eliminate residential fires, smoke detectors might be a means of warning inhabitants before a fire reached dangerous proportions.
Erie County Department of Fire Safety officials therefore wanted a program to educate the residents to the advantages of having smoke detectors in their homes. Basically, it was seen as an early warning program to enable residents to get out of a house before they were asphyxiated or seriously burned.
I envisioned information teams making a series of public appearances before as many civic, community and public interest groups as possible. Indepth training in fire prevention, fire safety and early warning devices would prepare the teams to be sufficiently knowledgeable to meet the public.
CETA funds sought
The program was presented to the Erie County Employment and Training Consortium to explore possibilities of securing Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) funds and participants to provide the manpower for such an expansive program.
Once the purpose and scope of this program were firmly developed, the proposal drew broad support from the CETA administrators as well as other county officials.
Money to operate the proposed project was granted through the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act of 1978 (P.L. 95-524). The prime sponsor consulted was the Erie County Consortium and the project operator was the Erie County Department of Fire Safety.
Fire safety program facilities at the Erie County fire training tower and the classrooms of the Fire Training Academy in Cheektowaga, a Buffalo suburb, made possible the intensive training needed to prepare the participants for public presentations. The grant provided $128,000 to run the project for one year with eight junior career trainees, two clerk-typists and a coordinator.
Project starts
By March 30, 1979, the trainees and typists had been hired and Project 1093 was under way. Since job specifications did not include previous knowledge of fire training, none of the participants was familiar with fire fighting techniques or smoke detectors. The first step was training sessions totaling 315 hours provided by department staff members, the project’s coordinator, a retired industrial fire marshal, and members of the Buffalo Fire Department training bureau. Fire equipment manufacturers, insurance firms and smoke detector vendors rounded out the teaching staff. Additional information on photoelectric and ionization chamber smoke detectors was supplied by the National Fire Protection Association and Underwriters Laboratories.
In preparation for meeting the public, the trainees developed a slide-sound presentation. They took all the pictures for this audio-visual aid, using themselves, Buffalo fire fighters and even relatives as models.
Three sets of four panels to use as back-drops at speaking appearances were designed, painted and lettered by the trainees.
The trainees, after completing their training on June 12, 1979, arranged for displays to be shown in the concourses of the five malls in Erie County on a weekly rotating basis.
The smoke detector education project was originally funded for 12 months at $128,000 from March 30,1979 to March 29, 1980 through the Erie County Department of Fire Safety. At the outset, the department received 20 percent of the contract fund. Thereafter, monthly invoices were issued against the remainder of the fund in the form of a line item budget and administrative costs were not permitted to exceed 15 percent of the contract.
Project personnel received assistance in promoting their seminars from the Erie County Consortium’s public relations office in contacting both media and community interest groups. Radio stations aired spot notices of scheduled appearances at malls. Three TV stations presented 10 to 30-minute programs on the project using participants as panel members.
Letters were sent to all Erie County fire chiefs and fire districts and the Erie County Fire Advisory Board to tell them of the availability of trained personnel to present 30 or 60-minute programs advocating the use of smoke detectors in homes. Volunteer fire companies, senior citizen groups and other civic groups, such as Lions Clubs or the Kiwanis were contacted.
Entry to schools
Similar contacts were made with the superintendents of all school districts in Erie County. Followup on these contacts opened doors to most elementary, public and parochial schools in the area. Seventy-five two-man presentations were made, starting Sept. 18,1979. The scheduling of school talks was made easier by a law requiring at least one weekly 15-minute session on fire prevention or fire safety.
A display was set up in the Firemen’s Building at the 10-day Erie County Fair in August 1979. Over 200 man-hours were devoted to staffing the display and 1053 persons stopped at the booth to ask questions and receive literature.
The Erie County Employment and Training Consortium was responsible for administering and evaluating the program operations in accordance with contractual agreements. Among those provisos defining Title VI CETA projects are that a project be a definable task or group of related tasks which:
- Will be completed within a definable time period, not exceeding 18 months.
- Will have a public service objective.
- Will result in a specific project or accomplishment.
- Would not otherwise be done with existing funds.
Operations audited
Project operators must comply with the assurances and certifications mandated by the United States Department of Labor. All project operators are subject to monitoring and audits by the prime sponsor and the Government Accounting Office.
The participants in our program feel they surpassed the original objectives. At a conservative estimate, over 23,000 persons have heard about smoke detectors and escape planning. In several cases, after presentations had been scheduled at malls, department stores cooperated by holding smoke detector sales.
Community service organizations, including the Jaycees, Rotary Clubs, Kiwanis Clubs and volunteer fire departments, began offering smoke detectors to their constituents free of charge and in some cases even provided free installation. The important point to note is that all of these secondary programs started after the smoke detector education project was well under way.
Editor’s Note: The smoke detector education project was not refunded for 1980-81, but the staff of the Erie County Department of Fire Safety is endeavoring to continue it in a limited way, with the cooperation of the county volunteer fire fighters.
