LYNCHBURG, Va. – The Lynchburg Fire Department is taking a new approach to fire safety.
Door by door, Sean McCleese and other Lynchburg firefighters spoke with city residents Wednesday, handing out brochures and smoke detectors.
“We’re out in different neighborhoods knocking on doors,” McCleese said. “Making sure that people have smoke detectors in their homes. And that they have Batteries in the smoke detectors.”
By getting out into the neighborhoods, firefighters also have a chance to take a look at the houses and figure out how they’d respond in the event of a fire.
“A lot of the older homes if they’re not maintained properly, you’ll have electrical issues but mainly most of these are splitting up into apartments and there are multiple people living in the multiple apartments so there’s more risk for cooking fires,” he said.
But these neighborhoods aren’t random. They’ve been identified as hotspots – highly populated areas where most of the fires happen.
Tyson Dummeldinger is one of the department’s newest employees, and he doesn’t have any experience fighting fires, which he thinks he can use to his advantage. He’s a data analyst, tracking the department’s call volume to identify hotspots, measure response times, and more.
“I have no fire background and I think that helps me,” he said. “I look at our data and use it to answer the question of how can we improve as a department. If we see one area of town has a significant amount of calls – improved over there.”
Combining data and what firefighters see in the field to better serve the community.
“If we can give a smoke detector to somebody, and it saves their life, we’ve done a pretty good job.”