By Olivia Goldberg
The Belleville News-Democrat
COLLINSVILLE, Ill. — Firefighters combing through the remnants of an apartment after a blaze killed two people there on Feb. 23 found no evidence of a smoke detector on the premises.
Canvassing the five other apartments in the complex on South Chestnut, they also discovered smoke detectors in each unit had been disabled. Residents had either not replaced batteries, or had left existing batteries pulled back from their contacts so they would not chirp.
Collinsville Fire Chief Pete Stehman said people generally don’t think a fire will touch their lives.
“But fires do happen to people, and that’s why the city and state have ... laws in place.”
None of the other apartments suffered damage from the fire that killed Mamie Lynn Doolittle, 48, and Caiu Rodriguez, 6, and firefighters immediately made sure residents took steps to prevent the loss of life and propert in the future. They returned to those homes with fire detectors and batteries in hand, and replaced every apparatus.
Crews checked out homes around four blocks in the fire’s immediate vicinity the next day, and installed smoke detectors and batteries for everyone who didn’t have them.
Stehman, who came aboard as fire chief in November, will unveil a program that will see fire crews inspect each home to which an engine company responds, to ensure residents have operable smoke detectors. If not, they will provide residents with the apparatus or batteries.
Stehman had planned to roll out the program, called “Leave Them Safe,” later in the spring. The blaze Saturday, though, is prompting his department to kick off the initiative earlier. Stehman thinks crews could be equipped with smoke detectors sometime later next week.
“There’s going to be some cost,” he said. He anticipated partnering with certain people to defray expenses about $10 per smoke detector and $1 per battery. Still, as the fire Saturday proved, the costs of not detecting a fire early can be far greater than the price of a battery.
As Stehman put it, “We’re trying to get something positive out of a very tragic loss.”