On a beautiful Saturday in Southern Maryland the members of station 3 and 9 under the direction of Fire Chief Joe Gould boarded apparatus to proceed to St. Clement's Crossing Trailer Park to check with all the residents to make sure they all had working smoke alarms and if they didn't we would provide them with the new style alarms with the ten year battery. These type will be much more efficient as you won't have to change battery's every year. Once we got there the Fire Chief gave us instructions on where to proceed. The resident's had been notified by a letter we provided to the office so they were prepared when all the fire truck's pulled up. We did wait till 10:00 a.m. before knocking on doors. Let's face it, no one wants to be woke up early on their weekend.

So, as we made our way up one street and then another we were greeted by everyone warmly and that always makes you feel good about what we were doing and our Chief feels that this kind of fire prevention is as important as fighting fires. All the member's who gave up their Saturday must have felt the same. Now old Doug and Les Hansen are always thinking about how to get out of work or in this case walking for miles up and down hills so I told the Chief we could be the supply wagon and run around as we were requested. That way everyone would not have to carry but one box at a time. This did work good for all especially Les and I.

Now, it took hours to cover since this is one of the biggest trailer parks in our first due. Now, for a few facts for the day. Total time 4.5 hours. Man hours 76.5. Visited 120 homes with average 4 people to each home running in ages 2 to 70 years of age. We installed 74 smoke alarms at no cost to the homeowner. The alarms were purchased out of our fire prevention budget and ordered by Melvin Tennyson's Fire Extinguishers.

We hope to visit some other location in the near future.
Want to thank the following members who gave of their time.
J. Gould, D. Medley, K. Fairfax, L. Hansen, D. Martoni, J. Howard, P. Stanley, H. Blazer, M. Brunner, J. McClane, JA McClane, B. Theden, C. Theden, M. Malpass, L. Thompson, M. Tennyson, M. Tennyson. You can all be proud of your efforts to prevent fires and save lives.