Insurance Commish Miguel Chaney issued the following statement:
All too often, fire
investigators call me about a fire death somewhere in Mississippi. I
have to ask, “Did the victim have a working smoke
alarm?” Sadly, in about half the cases we investigate the answer is
“no.”
This is particularly
disturbing to me because buying and maintaining a smoke alarm seems a
small price to pay when your life hangs in the balance. Smoke alarms can
cut your risk of dying in a fire in half.
So far in 2019 there have been 25
fire deaths reported statewide. That’s a 41% decrease over this time
last year. However, in at least 16 cases in 2019, there were no working
smoke alarms.
To combat this, my office
is distributing 23,526 smoke alarms to city and county fire departments
throughout the state. Distribution began on Wednesday, May 15, 2019
when
several departments picked up their alarms in Jackson. We’ll be hand
delivering more smoke alarms in the coming weeks and there are still
more smoke alarms available if a department wants to request some.
A county fire
coordinator recently told me that his department had not been able to
afford to buy smoke alarms and were dependent on what my office could
give them. He went on to tell me that he believed there
were many people in his county that couldn’t afford to buy an alarm.
I’ve found that the elderly are particularly at risk of not having a
working smoke alarm.
For several years,
money to purchase smoke alarms has been tight. I would ask the
legislature to consider allocating more funds in the future so that
Mississippians could be better protected.
The smoke alarms we
bought this year were purchased with grant money from FEMA and the
Department of Homeland Security. Until the legislature sees fit to
appropriate more money, my office will continue to
apply for grants, even though those seem harder to come by these days.
Going forward, my
staff will train departments on how to install the alarms, as needed. I
would encourage anyone in need of a smoke alarm to call their local fire
department or the State Fire Marshal’s Office
at 601-359-1061.
12 comments:
More free shit, bought with that "free" grant money.
Grant money = bribing the "tax-payers" with their own money.
Yes, they save lives, but so does abstinence from alcohol while driving; abstinence from illegal drugs and rock climbing and racing and skydiving.
This is just more vote pandering free shit.
Where the fuck do you people think FEMA money originates?
I own several rental properties in Pearl. The city inspects these properties. They require me to pretty much replace the smoke alarms every year or else it's a hassle to have them certified. Why the hell am I paying for new smoke alarms for 20 properties?
Shouldn't I just get the gubment to replace them for me? Is it because I'm white?
The people getting free smoke alarms are the same geniuses hanging curtains over their space heaters or using charcoal grills inside.
A smoke detector cost about the same as a 6 pack of beer. Let people buy their own.
A true blue Republican would call the giving away of free smoke detectors "welfare" on account of it being tax payer money and big government and all that stuff.
Yet I suspect most Republicans will beat their chests and tell people how they personally saw to it that every man, women and child received a free smoke detector.
Why would anyone want to save money to send their kids to college these days?
Everyone is talking about Free college and forgiving student debt. So why would anyone want to pay for it themselves when you have colleges forgiving all loans or not charging tuition (https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-medical-school-free-20180824-story.html)
Seems like MPACT and MACS is for suckers.
If it were simply a matter of not being able to afford one, I can see giving somebody a smoke alarm. However, that's surely not the case. It's a matter of having no concern about safety. Anybody on this planet can save up five bucks to purchase something this cheap. They have no desire to.
If truth be known, these people expect not only a free smoke alarm (and infant car seat) but somebody to show up and install it while they sit on the couch with a pork-chop in one hand and a cell phone in the other.
These are also some of the same people we read about whose children died in a mobile home fire while THEY were at the club. They can't afford to protect their children but can afford to go clubbin' for six hours twice a week.
And if they have a bank account, they'd love for somebody from the government to balance their check-book, assuming they saw value in THAT.
This is not a race-based opinion as I assume the reality of it applies across racial lines.
In one year the recipients of this free shit will be demanding that the gubment come over and replace the batteries in their smoke alarms, even though they could purchase 9V batteries with their EBT cards.
However, they are saving their EBT cards for 40s.
You all are in rare form on this thread! Since it is your taxpayer dollars, why don't you get an alarm or two for yourselves since you paid for them.
8:20- Because we already too care of this ourselves. We would never leave our safety or that of our family to the government to take care of.
I don't know the exacts of this program, but I was once paid $82.50 by FEMA per smoke detector installed. We also installed CO2 monitors at that same rate. Made about $60 per detector counting the install (less than 5 minutes each). There were over 10,000 homes involved. We had 1200 of them.
10,000 x $82.50 = $825k x 2 (smoke and CO2) = $1.65 million for about $400k worth of work. That seems about right for the efficiency of government spending. It was absolutely ridiculous, but I viewed it as getting some tax dollars back.
I am now an expert smoke alarm installer. Send me the contract.
The government motto is "Getting less but spending more"
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