WV Firefighter Needs Your Help
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Water Valley fire inspector Layth Terry is having trouble seeing over his desk after his department received a shipment of 200 smoke detectors. The smoke detectors are free for people who live in the city limits of Water Valley.
WATER VALLEY – The Water Valley Fire Department has a problem and needs your help. The department received a shipment of 200 smoke detectors last week and boxes and boxes of them are stacked up in Fire Inspector Layth Terry’s office making it difficult for him to see over his desk.
This should be a simple remedy, the smoke detectors are free for people who reside inside the city limits of Water Valley. Fire Chief Mark McGavock reported the smoke detectors are available on a fire-come, first-served basis and there are no income stipulations or other criteria for eligibility.
The department launched the smoke detector project last July and have installed 85 in residences across the city. But there is a another problem, only five percent of the houses they installed them in did not have smoke detectors at all.
“A lot of times we are replacing old smoke detectors, which is good. But we also need to reach residences in the city that do not have smoke detectors,” McGavock explained. “We know there are a lot of houses without them because when we pull up to a fire scene, the first thing we should her are the smoke detectors beeping and the fire crackling.
We are pulling up to fires with smoke coming out of the houses and not hearing the smoke detectors.”
McGavock stressed the importance of smoke detectors, explaining that in less than a minute of a fire starting in your house you will be alerted. Another example, a recent fire fatality in the city would have likely been prevented if the house had working smoke detectors.
The smoke detectors were provided to the city by the Mississippi Fire Rating Bureau. The only requirement is to fill out a simple, eight-question survey that will take less than a minute. Once the survey is completed, the fire department will schedule an appointment to install the smoke detectors – one in each bedroom and one in a common area of the house. The home visit will also include an optional fire safety inspection to identify potential hazards.
The chief also stressed that if you already have smoke detectors in your house, you can still participate in the program.
“We will check the batteries in your smoke detectors or replace older detectors. We will also install additional smoke detectors to make sure your home is completely covered,” McGavock stressed.
The link is https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1RsdIFCg3bG69y939H04mCFgWHyi_Yo5QMP1ai0tUywg/edit. Copies of the survey are also available at the fire and police department on Wise Street.
“Or you can call me and I will bring you a copy of the survey,” McGavock said. “We want to make this as easy as possible.”
The chief can be reached at (662) 473-7486.
