SIOUX CITY | After every house fire, officials with Sioux City Fire Rescue field calls concerning the Safe Home Inspection Program.
Joe Rodriguez, deputy fire marshal serving Sioux City Fire Rescue, can almost set his watch by this local behavior. On one hand, he's grateful members of the public are responsive.
Other the other, he probably wishes it wouldn't take a tragedy to get them there.
A Safe Home Inspection by Rodriguez and firefighters like him takes 30-45 minutes and is provided at no cost. A homeowner might also benefit by receiving two new fire alarms, installed by firefighters for free.
"Smoke alarms are good for 10 years, whether they're battery operated or hard wired," said Rodriguez, a veteran of Sioux City Fire Rescue for 17 years. "We ask people to set one day per month to check the battery and make sure the unit is working."
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It's also a good reminder, he said, to change a fire alarm's batteries when we change from standard time to daylight savings time, and vice versa.
Sioux City's Safe Home Inspection effort has been around since 2011, when officials were asked to visit 40 homes to provide an inspection while detailing a fire safety plan for each home. The visit includes a checklist that covers items such as heating units in the home, the location of potential fire or safety hazards, an evacuation plan and more.
For example, do you know if your street address is accurately and properly marked in a visible means from the street? That item alone may cost emergency responders valuable seconds.
The number of Safe Home Inspection visits spiked in 2012 at 357. It settled back to 94 in 2013, 118 in 2014 and 123 in 2015.
"We put in 231 fire alarms in Sioux City homes in 2015," Rodriguez said.
"Residents are not required to fix or address the things we point out," he added. "When we visit businesses in Sioux City, and we visit each business every year, they are required to make changes we suggest."
Those changes can involve emergency lighting, smoke alarms, multiple evacuation points and sprinkler systems.
"They are required to make changes we recommend because they involve public safety, the safety of their employees and the businesses themselves," said Rodriguez.
Rodriguez, a native of Houston, Texas, spent eight years in the U.S. Navy, serving in Operation Desert Shield in the Persian Gulf, before ending his military service and heading to college. He arrived in Sioux City nearly two decades ago and has helped protect and educate the public ever since.
The most difficult part of his role involves investigating the cause of a fire when someone has been killed. He did that a few months ago. The victim was just 3 years old.
"That's tough," he said.
Those kinds of instances keep him vigilant in his quest to keep Sioux City residents on their toes when it comes to possible hazards like space heaters, faulty extension chords, matches and cooking devices left unattended, even if only momentarily.
All those, plus smoke alarms, one of the first lines of defense in a fire.
"You double your chances to survive a fire by having working smoke alarms on each level in the home," he said. "The common mistakes people make involve not having alarms in the right places, or not changing the batteries twice each year."
