Continued: Firefighters reach out to residents to prevent fires

The fire department that serves Spring Lake Park, Blaine and Mounds View has created a unique community partnership to try to prevent fires.

When Fire and Life educator Becky Booker visits people's homes to help them hunt down fire and injury hazards, she comes bearing gifts: smoke detectors donated by Wal-Mart, batteries from Batteries Plus, safety brochures, a free ABC Newspaper subscription, gift cards from Chanticlear Pizza, Subway and now Salad Creations. The department is negotiating to get donated flameless candles, which it now pays for.

"The chief said we should make people feel really good, encourage them if they're wondering whether or not to do this," Booker said. "Local businesses needed to get their names out, and we needed something free."

Booker, also an arson investigator and registered nurse, coordinates the program, which began when she joined the department as a firefighter 10 years ago.

"We developed this program, and we thought it was just great, but nobody called us," she said.

One winter day things changed.

"There was a really, really bad fire and it was so preventable," she said, "The house burned down, and as it burned down, people were watching. It was 20 degrees out, just miserable, and everybody was just watching what was going on. I thought, 'They are just as at-risk.'"

She went back to the station, gathered some smoke alarms and a drill and returned to the neighborhood. She knocked on people's doors and asked if she could check their smoke detectors.

"Once I got their trust, I offered the home safety survey and everybody took it," she said.

Since then, Booker and her colleagues have visited more than 2,500 houses, apartments and manufactured homes. She also looks for areas that make the resident vulnerable to injury or crime.

Only three of the homes she's visited have been involved in fire calls.

In at least one case, she went back to find the cause of the fire, and it was something she and the homeowner already had identified as a hazard.

"They chose to do nothing about it," she said. "They're paying the ultimate price. Our job-service dedication goal is to do everything for them to not need us."

Still, she added, it's very important to her that people don't feel judged or criticized.

"I'm a fresh set of eyes, a neutral person," she said, adding that she thinks the message sticks. "My chief said I haunt people. ... Every time after I leave they're going to see that extension cord and it drives them crazy until they check it out."

Maria Elena Baca • 612-673-4409