Fire Prevention Week 2010 Theme Deals with Smoke Alarms Fire Prevention Week – October 3 thru 9, 2010 The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) has announced the theme for this year’s Fire Prevention Week: Smoke Alarms: A sound you can live with. Fire Prevention Week will be held from October 3-9, 2010. Each year in October since 1922, the NFPA has sponsored the fire prevention campaign to emphasize the importance of fire safety to inspire individuals to take action to prevent fires and avoid the deaths, injuries, and destruction they cause. In 2008, home fires killed 2,755 people and injured 13,160. Two of every five home fire deaths were in a home with no smoke alarms and another one in five was in a home where the smoke alarms were not working. This year’s theme aims to educate the public on how smoke alarms save lives and why they should be installed and maintained in every home. Having working smoke alarms can cut the chances of dying in a fire in half. The theme will focus on how to choose, install, and maintain smoke alarms. NFPA has taken the lead in public fire safety outreach by serving as the official sponsor of Fire Prevention Week for 88 years. The annual public awareness and safety commemoration, which is proclaimed by the President of the United States each year, is observed by fire departments in the U.S. and Canada to mark the anniversary of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. According to the National Archives and Records Administration’s Library Information Center, Fire Prevention Week is the longest running public health and safety observance on record.