Statewide Smoke Detector Blitz
FEATURES
FIRE PREVENTION
What began as an idea for a smoke detector awareness campaign expanded into a $500,000 advertising program funded completely by donations and ingenuity.
The Marion County Fire District in Salem, OR, clearly demonstrated that dedicated public fire educators can accomplish almost unlimited results with very limited resources if given the time and talent.
The fire service has long recognized the proven value of smoke detectors in reducing the loss of life and property to fire. We also recognize that far too many homes are still without this relatively inexpensive and reliable protection.
To stress the importance of smoke detectors to the general public, the National Fire and Burn Education Association (NFBEA) joined forces with the Oregon Fire Education Association (OFEA) and launched a statewide smoke detector awareness campaign. A special projects committee was formed by representatives from the NFBEA, the OFEA, the Oregon State Fire Marshal’s Office, the Oregon Fire Standards and Accreditation Board, the insurance industry, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Oregon Fire Chiefs’ Association (OFCA), the Oregon Fire Marshals’ Association (OFMA), and public fire education personnel from fire departments throughout Oregon. The goal of this committee is to represent all of the Oregon fire services and to impact the entire region with timely home fire safety information. The campaign ties in with National Fire Prevention Week, and its ultimate objective is to expand into a regional and eventually nationwide effort.
The message of this campaign is twofold: first, that every home needs a smoke detector on every level. Second, that smoke detectors need regular maintenance and testing. To accomplish point two, the slogan “make Tuesday detector test day” was coined throughout the communities.
The committee started off the smoke detector awareness campaign by putting together a public service announcement. With a burning house as a backdrop (a house scheduled for demolition was burned for this purpose) and U.S. Senator Mark O. Hatfield as spokesman, a high quality public service announcement was professionally produced by The Film Loft, a local firm. This tape was then reproduced by KOIN-TV in Portland, OR (at no cost to the committee) for distribution to all Oregon television stations.
KOIN-TV also produced and aired during Fire Prevention Week a fivepart series on fire safety entitled “A Burning Tragedy.” This series dealt with wood stoves, smoke detectors, and how to react in home fires. Each installment was five minutes long and was aired during regular news broadcasts. To have school children tune into the series, KOINTV produced, printed, and supplied schools with 200,000 copies of a quiz containing questions that could be answered with information contained in the series. These quizzes were used as a homework assignment for part of the required fire safety curriculum.
In conjunction with this portion of the campaign, the Oregon Superintendent of Education, at the request of the committee, endorsed the campaign and circulated a newsletter to each school in the state asking them to support it.
KGW-TV in Portland also did a special segment on smoke detectors on their evening news program during Fire Prevention Week; and the “A.M. Northwest” television program filmed and aired a segment on smoke detectors during Fire Prevention Week.
Working with committee representatives, the grocery bag printing division of Willamette Industries prepared the artwork, came up with the campaign logo, “Smoke Detectors in Every Home on Every Level Saves Lives,” and printed the material, all at no cost to the committee.
In addition to printing on all campaign material, the logo was also printed on bags distributed by three of the state’s grocery bag printing firms. Over five-million bags, at an estimated cost of $250,000, carried the smoke detector message to grocery outlets in Oregon and southwest Washington.
In addition, two major retailers, Safeway and Fred Meyer, printed the message on the side of their milk cartons; and Safeway also printed the message in its weekly mailer.
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With a $2,500 donation from the Portland Fire Bureau, the committee arranged for printing and distribution of 250,000 doorhangers. These were prepared and distributed by Goodwill Industries of Oregon in conjunction with their annual fall donation drive. The message contained the logo and information established by the committee and covered the entire Portland metropolitan area.
Northwest Natural Gas, at no cost to the committee, printed and enclosed a “stuffer” in their utility bills, which carried the fire prevention message. Arrangements were also made for Pacific Northwest Bell Telephone Company to run the campaign message in their newsletter which goes to every employee in Oregon and Washington.
Tabor Publishing of Milwaukie, OR, which prints a fire prevention newsletter for many of Oregon’s fire districts and departments, included the smoke detector message and logo in their bulk mailing, resulting in direct-to-the-home distribution of 350,000 copies of the fire prevention message.
The OFCA and the OFMA participated by sending letters to every newspaper, radio and television station in Oregon, endorsing the campaign and encouraging their participation. Copy for radio and television public service announcements were sent out by the committee and were well received and widely used. Numerous newspapers, large and small, participated by doing special articles about the campaign and the smoke detector message.
The OFCA and the OFMA also sent six letters to every Oregon fire department, notifying them of the campaign, reporting on what programs could be expected locally, and encouraging their support. The committee, with a $4,000 donation from the OFCA, then contracted for the printing of 270,000 flyers bearing the smoke detector logo and message. With the assistance of the OFCA, 100 of these were distributed to every fire department in Oregon. They were notified that up to 5,000 flyers could be obtained from the committee at no charge. This was to insure that even those small departments with little or no resources could participate. Those departments needing more than 5,000 copies were sold the additional number at a nominal cost. The ingenuity of the various departments in distributing all 270,000 copies was quite rewarding. They were sent out doorto-door, by direct mail, through schools, in shopping center displays, and even as newspaper “stuffers.”
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Using a donation from the Oregon^ Insurance Managers’ Council, the committee arranged for advertising placards on 50 Portland buses. Arrangements were also made for a Sunday newspaper supplement to do two different articles for the campaign. This carried a circulation of about 430,000 copies.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission supplied 40,000 of their own smoke detector brochures at no charge for distribution to those agencies that could put them to good use. Also, at least one Portland area insurance company agreed to mail out smoke detector information with their premium billing, reaching about 5,000 people.
Prompted by the activities of the committee, various fire departments around the state put together their own programs for tying into the campaign. The Eugene Fire Department worked with their local television station to produce a 30-minute fire safety program directed at fifth graders in the Eugene/Albany area. This program was aired in prime time during Fire Prevention Week and a quiz-type assignment distributed to the schools.
Local merchants in some areas were contacted by fire department representatives and encouraged to give away smoke detectors as drawing prizes.
Firefighters, working with citizen volunteers, went door-to-door with the message in some areas. Also, displays and booths were set up in many stores and shopping malls and manned by fire department personnel. Oregon Governor Victor Atiyeh signed a special proclamation for the campaign, urging everyone to obtain a smoke detector and to “make Tuesday test day.”
To insure that everyone would be able to have a smoke detector, regardless of financial status, many fire departments set up give-away programs. Using funds donated by individual firefighters, hundreds of detectors were made available to citizens and installed by on-duty firefighters.
Based on the results of this unique pilot project, the Oregon Special Projects Committee now believes that a similar effort could be accomplished in any state, given the right combination of dedication, time, and effort. If properly coordinated by a central organization, such as the National Fire and Burn Education Association, which initiated similar efforts in Oregon, Washington, and Texas, it would seem reasonable that ail states together could carry out an annual nationwide campaign that would heavily impact this country’s staggering fire loss statistics. Oregon has shown that it can be done. The challenge now is there for fire educators in the other 49 states to get organized for the same cause.
