Minutes matter as a home fire progresses, and the difference between life and death may be as simple as how long it takes a person to react.
As the Mercer County Fire Marshal’s Office reviewed fire deaths from 2016, the role of reaction time came to the fore because all five fatalities involved individuals 55 and older. That statistic got Mercer County Fire Marshal James M. Greschak thinking not just about why people of that age might be more prone to fire deaths, but also about what he might do to reduce these deaths.
The importance of the cause highlighted itself once again last month when firefighters in Ewing pulled a 55-year-old from his home, which had caught fire. The man later died from his injuries.
“We like to think there is nothing that is entirely unavoidable,” he says, noting that if a person had “reacted earlier in a sequence of events, there is a chance they would have made it to safety.” Older people may be slower to react and consequently not get out of harm’s way quickly enough. Or, he says, “sometimes an older person has a secure feeling about where they are even though there is fire burning.” Or they simply may not hear a smoke alarm because they are hard of hearing.
These ruminations moved Greschak to begin organizing a new fire safety initiative in conjunction with the Mercer County Department of Human Services and the Mercer County Office on Aging, also including the Mercer County Fire Prevention and Protection Association and the Mercer County Active Fire Chiefs Association. Its goal is to try to eliminate fire deaths through outreach and education. A steering committee is currently being formed, and Greschak expects it to come to fruition by early April. So far, the committee has representatives from each of county level fire organizations and appropriate county government agencies. The committee is still accepting members, and welcomes anyone who has interest and the expertise. Greschak expects the program to develop over the course of 2017.
The Mercer County Office on Aging should be a big help in reaching out to as many Mercer seniors as possible. “They have the resources and ability to reach out to these segments of population,” Greschak says.
‘I have a basic urge inside of me to help people.’
In terms of the content of the fire education program, Greschak says he intends to keep things simple. He wants to focus on a few critical rules of fire safety: people should make sure they have working smoke detectors; they should not wear loose clothing while cooking; and, above all, at the first sign of any problem, they should evacuate the residence and call 911 or have a neighbor call 911.
An issue that affects the elderly population disproportionately is hearing impairment, which can prevent people from hearing conventional smoke detectors. Greschak would like the new program to help people with hearing loss obtain smoke detectors that can alert a sleeping person to a fire. Among devices available are one that signals by flashing very large strobe lights, designed to awaken someone who is sleeping; another makes a bed vibrate; and a third uses a spray nozzle on the headboard to spray water onto someone’s face. “It is a matter of evaluating that particular individual to see what works best for them or what they prefer,” Greschak says.
What actually causes a fire is not always clear, since critical evidence may burn up. But fire marshals use any evidence they can find to pose a likely scenario for a fire death, as they have done (or are continuing to investigate) regarding the 2016 fires.
The first fire death, in January 2016, involved a 75-year-old woman at the Luther Arms Apartments on South Broad Street in Trenton. The cause was thought to be a malfunction in the battery pack of a motorized wheelchair.
The next fire, in September, killed an 85-year-old woman on Labor Day Weekend on Coleman Lane in Titusville in Hopewell Township. The cause is still being investigated. What is known is that she reported the fire through the medical alert pendant she wore and that the medical alert dispatcher asked her a series of standard questions pertaining to her medical state.
That likely caused a delay, Greschak says. But because she was mobile, he thinks she may have gotten out of the house in time and perhaps went back in for her dog. In any case, she had died by the time the fire department arrived.
A fire on Montana Avenue in Hamilton Township caused the deaths of two women. One, who died on the scene, was 79; the other, who died later from burns, smoke inhalation, and complications, was 75. The cause was traced to a heating pad used by the victim who died in the fire. Greschak surmises that the heating pad may not have been used properly, for example, the woman may have kept it underneath the bed covers, or the woman may not have reacted quickly enough to get out of the residence.
“In most cases, we can just take an educated guess,” he says.
The last victim of 2016, in mid-December, was just 55 and believed to be a squatter in a vacant residence. It appears that he started a fire from combustible materials in the residence to warm himself, and the fire spread.
Greschak retired six years ago from his position as the fire official for the State of New Jersey. In Mercer County he has served as assistant fire marshal and then fire marshal for a combined total of 30 years.
As fire marshal, he does fire investigations and runs fire-prevention activities. A youth fire center program in Mercer County, for example, works with youths who he says “may be showing a tendency toward fire-setting behavior, from behavior as simple as curiosity to setting serious fires.” The goal of this prevention and intervention program, now serving about 22 youths from across the county, is “to steer younger individuals from that behavior before it gets serious.”
Greschak was born in Trenton. He lived in Hamilton until age 12, then moved to West Windsor and never left. He earned a degree in fire science at Trenton State College and also took classes at Mercer County Community College. He has been a volunteer firefighter for over 40 years, following in the footsteps of his father. His motivation was simple: “I have a basic urge inside of me to help people,” he says.
Any members of the public who have ideas or questions about the new initiative can contact Jim Greschak at jgreschak@mercercounty.org.
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