Middleboro Fire Department finds success in new smoke alarm outreach project

MIDDLEBORO — With over 1,400 smoke alarms and counting, a new initiative at the Middleboro Fire Department is supplying residents with the first line of defense against household fires.

In May, the department started its “Three, Two, One” fire safety initiative, offering free smoke alarm installations and household checks for fire safety problems and solutions. Since then, the department has installed smoke and carbon monoxide alarms in more than 230 Middleboro homes.

The “Three, Two, One” tagline comes from the three-minutes it can take for a fire to spread quickly throughout a structure. Fire Captain Timothy Andrews said modern homes include many synthetic, plastic and quick-burning materials compared to homes constructed decades ago.

“Back in the 70s and the 80s, you had 15 minutes — sometimes 30 minutes — to get out of your home,” Andrews said. “You don't have that time now. You have three minutes to get out.”

Fire Chief Owen Thompson said maintaining and replacing smoke alarms is a simple, and highly important task that people should commit to check up on every month.

He said alarms are often seen as a nuisance, especially when they ring for non-emergencies in the middle of the night — which is also when fatal fires occur the most.

“That 1% of the time — when there's actually a fire — is so much more important than the other 99% of the time that you hear it,” Thompson said.

The project began after a 12-year-old died in a Middleboro house fire in February 2024. After investigators found no operating smoke alarms in the burned house, the department wanted to step in and find how it can prevent fatal fires — especially those involving children — in the town.

Since May, a state grant has funded the installation of roughly 1,400 smoke alarms through the initiative, and the sign up list continues to grow as residents learn of the assistance program, Andrews said. 

“Smoke alarms are every person's initial defense against fire,” Thompson said. “It gives you the best opportunity to make it out of any structure safely." 

Thompson added at the three most recent fatal fires in Middleboro, state fire investigators were “undetermined in finding the presence of working smoke alarms.” 

After the February 2024 fire, Andrews brought the idea of starting a free smoke-alarm project to Stephanie Hall, the town’s director of grant development and special projects, who writes grants for Middleboro departments and facilities. 

“A few of us then focused our efforts into hoping that scenes like that never happened again,” Andrews said. “So we started applying for the FEMA grant for providing smoke alarms and carbon monoxide alarms for, mainly, homes with children.”

By the end of 2024, grant applications were sent out and Hall secured about $215,00 in funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to purchase alarms and fund operating costs for the safety initiative. 

In May, the department began installing smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors for households that signed up for the program.

Middleboro firefighters install the free smoke alarms in three different houses each weekday, and also speak to residents about household fire safety issues, Andrews said. Firefighters walk through the households with residents to deliver a unique fire prevention audit to every home they visit. 

“We go through the house and we talk with the homeowners on various topics. [The audit] just depends on what we see,” Andrews said. “We have a checklist that we go through, then its focus is on what we find.”

“It's pertinent for them, whether it's cooking safety or something else — every house is different,” he added.

During the visit, topics like cooking safety, candle safety, outdoor grilling and electronics are reviewed with residents. Andrews said the audits are often about the simple things, like grease fires and having a meeting place in case of emergency.

“Those simple little things trigger something in people’s heads, like, ‘Oh, I never thought about it like that,’ so you've made somebody safer just by having a conversation with them,” Andrews said.

At its current stage, the initiative’s sign-up process prioritizes households with children. Andrews said their safety talks with residents are always tailored to their audience. 

Andrews said during safety talks with kids he talks about knowing multiple ways to exit the house, crawling below smoke and closing doors during a fire — since closed doors can slow down fast moving flames. 

He said with teenagers, the focus is often on safely charging electronics, unplugging them when not in use and not overloading charging strips — instances where batteries could ignite if not property taken care of.

Andrews and Thompson agreed the safety audits bolster the fire education Middleboro students receive from school, when firefighters make classroom visits to share fire safety lessons.

Andrews said kids are often the most fun to work with, since they are excited to learn from first responders who come to their homes to deliver both alarms and fire safety lessons.

“Between the messages in school to the fire safety audits, they're really excited about it,” Andrews said.

The grant funding was awarded to purchase and install alarms in about 500 households, but Andrews said they will most likely spend the funds before then because of recent changes in regulations and increased prices for alarms. 

He said the department intends to apply for a grant extension in the coming months.

In October, during nationally-recognized Fire Prevention Week, 19 Middleboro businesses helped spread the word on the importance of functional smoke alarms by posting messages in front of their business reading “Smoke Alarms Save Lives.” Andrews and Thompson said these simple messages from the community have improved the department’s outreach.

Apply to the Middleboro Fire Life Safety Audit Initiative through the “Give us One Hour” banner on the Middleboro Fire Department website’s home page.