Fires Claimed 91 People in Ala. in 2015

Sandra Kelley used to live in a brown, single-story apartment on Piedmont’s east side, where soot now stains the siding and ashes still lie on the sidewalk.

A fire started in the apartment the evening of Feb. 11, according to Piedmont fire Chief Mike Ledbetter, after Kelley lit a cigarette near her oxygen tank. The 66-year-old, whose cancer neighbors said had traveled to her brain, died from the injuries she sustained in the fire.

“She was a nice lady,” Pat Pope, a neighbor across Walker Street at Piedmont Manor Apartments, said Wednesday night.

Kelley’s death was the first resulting from a structure fire this year in Calhoun County. It was the 23rd such loss statewide, according to records posted online by the state fire marshal’s office, which tracks the deaths.

“Twenty-three is not a good number,” Scott Pilgreen, assistant state fire marshal, said by phone Wednesday morning. “It’s going to be right in line, unfortunately, with the past two years.”

Pilgreen said the marshal’s office counted 91 fire deaths in 2015 and 94 the year before that. And while fires have killed fewer people so far this year than last, there are still several weeks of winter left.

The number of deaths typically surges in winter months, Oxford fire Chief Gary Sparks said during a phone interview Tuesday, as families look for ways to stay warm.

Alabama’s first five deaths of 2016 occurred early the morning of New Year’s Day, when a Jackson County family tried to do just that.

The Alexanders — Kimberly, 34, and Tony, 42, went to bed after celebrating New Year’s Eve with their children, 8-year-old Breanna and 6-year-old Emily, and Kimberly’s 63-year-old mother, Carolyn Quarles.

The family was using a gas heater, local news agencies reported; investigators believe something combustible may have fallen on the heater, sparking the fire.

There were no smoke detectors in the house. None who slept there that night woke the next day.

Ten Calhoun County homes have burned so far this year, according to volunteer Chris Hill with Anniston’s branch of the American Red Cross. The nonprofit group offers assistance with lodging, clothing and food to families after fires.

Hill and other volunteers with the Red Cross, along with members of a Federal Emergency Management Agency team and the Anniston Fire Department, plan to install the detectors in a number of Anniston homes Sunday.

The local giveaway is part of a larger Red Cross campaign, Hill said, aimed at reducing the number of fire deaths nationwide by 25 percent over the next three years.

Just under 3,300 people died in fires nationwide in 2014, according to the National Fire Protection Association, with 84 percent of those deaths coming from house fires.

Ledbetter, the Piedmont Fire chief, refuses to sleep anywhere lacking smoke detectors.

House fires always release two deadly gases, said Ledbetter: carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide. The gases numb senses and bring on a deep sleep. Working detectors can jolt sleepers, allowing time to escape.

Unattended food is another leading cause of house fires, Pilgreen said, but human behavior remains the root of the problem.

“We’ve got to find a way individually to change our behaviors and habits when it comes to heating and cooking,” the assistant fire marshal said.

“Unfortunately, if we don’t handle it in that regard, when it turns into the worst case scenario, we don’t live to regret it.”

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©2016 The Anniston Star (Anniston, Ala.)

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