White and Williams Participates in American Red Cross "No More Fire Deaths" Campaign

White and Williams employees helped kick-off National Fire Prevention Week in Philadelphia by participating in the extremely important community program, the American Red Cross's "No More Fire Deaths" Campaign. The program pairs the business community with fire department and Red Cross members to install, on specific outreach days, smoke detectors in high fire risk neighborhoods. Many homes did not have any smoke detectors, or if smoke detectors were present, they were very old, unreliable, or without batteries. Each home received at least two new smoke detectors with permanently installed lithium batteries that will last ten years. 

The Red Cross program will save lives. Chris Konzelmann and our other volunteers who investigate and litigate fire claims on a regular basis concluded that, if there was a fire in the middle of the night in one of the unprotected homes, the occupants would be unable to escape and responding firefighters would then need to risk their own lives attempting rescues. With the new smoke detectors, the occupants will receive early notification of a fire and hopefully be able to quickly evacuate on their own.

Each year, the Red Cross responds to nearly 66,000 disasters, the vast majority of which are home fires. It set a goal to reduce fire-related deaths and injuries in the US by 25% by 2020. The Red Cross introduced its Home Fire Campaign in 2014 and the Philadelphia Fire Department and the American Red Cross, Southeastern Pennsylvania Chapter have developed and implemented the outreach program for various neighborhoods where there is a high risk of fire deaths because homes are not equipped with working smoke detectors.