Our efforts to reduce the amount of injury and deaths due to home fires have certainly seen great progress over the months but none more than this past weekend.
On March 19th, the Los Angeles Region held two Home Fire Prevention events – one of which was a signature event in the northern portion of the region, Van Nuys. The other was a monthly event in one of the region’s vulnerable communities, Paramount.
I was pleased to see an aggressive goal set of 400 smoke alarms to be installed in the Van Nuys community. However, I was thrilled to learn by the end of the day, our over achieving and very dedicated volunteers installed 686 alarms – our largest single-event total to date.
With 230 volunteers and staff present, it was also our largest turnout to date—made possible through our great development staff’s stewardship of Farmers Insurance, who sent over 70 agents and employees to volunteer. This effort was led by our LA Region Board Member and Head of Southern California Farmers, Bill Walrath. Bill brought with him an amazing energy and willingness to ensure this community would be well served. We were also pleased to have youth members from the Junior ROTC at the local high school, Monroe High, who turned out another 45 volunteers –most of whom were Spanish-speaking.
In addition, we had representatives from the offices of Senator Bob Hertzberg, Assemblyman Nazarian, County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl, LA Mayor Garcetti and City Councilmember Nury Martinez.
And of course, great success spawns great success. In Paramount, while not a “signature event,” with only 39 volunteers they managed to install 183 fire alarms. This extraordinarily productive ratio of volunteers to installations represents a different kind of “growth” for our region and success for the program.
March 19th was certainly our largest single day total – between both events, we installed some 900 alarms. This brings our running annual total to approximately 4,200 fire alarms installed since July 1, 2015.
I am extremely proud of the volunteers and partners that came out to these events and demonstrated how we do things here in the LA Region. Thank you all for your dedication and commitment to serving our mission.
