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“Smoke Alarms: A Sound You Can Live With!”  is NFPA’s official theme for Fire Prevention Week (FPW), October 3-9, 2010.

Educate your employees to about the importance of smoke alarms and urge them to safeguard their families with smoke detectors.  Encourage everyone to take the steps necessary to update and maintain their home smoke alarm protection. Several companies are offering a free smoke detector to employees who have none in their homes. Several years ago, I participated in a program with my employer, and the Philadelphia Fire Department to hand out 9 volt batteries in an effort to “Change Your Clocks – Change the Battery in Your Smoke Detector.”

Tips for a successful Fire Prevention Week program at your facility:

– Hang a banner reminding people of Fire Prevention Week

– Have safety department members and management greet employees as they leave and enter the facility and remind them to have a fire safe week – every week!

– Hand out fire prevention brochures to employees

– Create a fire safety quiz for employees to take home, complete with their family, and return a entrance into a prize drawing.

– Sponsor a plant wide hazard hunt.

– Sponsor a home hazard hunt for all employees to complete with their families.

Fire Prevention Week has been celebrated since 1922 in commemoration of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. The Great Chicago Fire killed more than 250 people. More than 100,000 were left homeless. Popular legend says the fire started when Mrs. O’Leary’s cow kicking over a lamp, setting the barn – then the entire City of Chicago on fire. In reality, there is no proof that her cow started the fire or that Mrs. O’Leary was in the barn.