Two house fires within the past two weeks in Chattooga County – one of which involved a fatality – is a grim reminder of the importance of working smoke detectors inside a residence.

A fire on Brooks Road near Lyerly left a Chattooga County family without a home and with all of their possessions gone.  That fire happened on April 9th.  Another fire last week took the life of a Lyerly man just off Highway 114.  Sixty-eight-year-old Danny Ray Millican died after a fire was reported at his house near Highway 114 around 7:35 PM last Thursday evening.

The National Fire Protection Association :

• Almost three of every five home fire deaths resulted from fires in homes with no smoke alarms (41%) or no working smoke alarms (16%).
• The death rate per 1,000 reported home fires was more than twice as high in homes that did not have any working smoke alarms compared to the rate in homes with working smoke alarms (13.0 deaths vs. 5.8 deaths per 1,000 fires).
• In fires in which the smoke alarms were present but did not operate, two of every five (41%) of the smoke alarms had missing or disconnected batteries.
• Dead batteries caused one-quarter (26%) of the smoke alarm failures.

If you don’t have or cannot afford a working smoke detector in your home, you can contact any of Chattooga County’s Fire Departments and they will assist you in installing smoke detectors in your home.