Nothing can be more devastating than a fire in your home.  Years of memories can all but vanish as pictures, letters and mementos of a family’s lifetime are lost in the flames.

And in some cases, a fire claims a life.

We urge our readers to look around their house or apartment and do a simple check of fire safety tips like:

• Changing the batteries in the smoke alarms
• Making sure that any electrical outlet is not overloaded
• Have an escape plan if there is a fire
• Clear all flammables away from the stove
• Have a fire extinguisher in the kitchen.
• Change your smoke detector every ten years.

More often than one would like to remember, there seems to be a devastating fire in our city that destroys multiple dwellings and tragically sometimes claims a life.

Being among the oldest communities in the Commonwealth, some of our housing stock dates back more than a century and are often built with less than four feet of space in between buildings.  These structures are prime for a major fire if the simple precautions mentioned above are not observed by the tenants.

Our firefighters never hesitate when they arrive on a fire scene as they rush into a burning inferno to make sure that the fire is brought under control quickly with no loss of life.

With Fire Prevention Week running through October 15, let’s make our community safe as we can, not only today but for our lifetime.