200 Foley residents receive smoke detectors

200 Foley residents receive smoke detectors

More than 200 Foley residents are living in safer homes after the start of a program to install smoke detectors in the city. The Foley Fire Department, American Red Cross and members of a local church recently distributed and installed smoke detectors in the Beulah Heights community as part of the Red Cross’s Sound the Alarm campaign intended to get smoke detectors into homes.
“Saturday was our first effort,” said Foley Fire Chief Joey Darby. “We focused on Beulah Heights, because we’ve had some fires over there. We had one in particular last year. And there’s been some tragedy in Beulah Heights going way back long before my time.”
Darby said many residents in the area do not speak English. Members of the local church, IMP Jesucristo Es El Camino, worked with firefighters and Red Cross members to talk to residents about the program and convince them to have the smoke detectors installed.
“Our Hispanic community continues to grow and there are certain areas in Beulah Heights that are predominantly Hispanic areas that don’t speak English at all. They were great partners to really help us get out and educate the public about what we were doing,” Darby said.
“We’re already talking about other areas of town that we’re going to work through,” Darby said. “Working smoke alarms save lives. The key word there is working smoke alarms. A lot of places have one, but they don’t work. It was quite interesting and, unfortunately, somewhat alarming for us to see the number of residents that didn’t have them at all. Educating those folks was extremely important, and we’re gonna continue to work on that.”