“But the smoke alarm upstairs is what saved us because if it wasn’t for that smoke alarm we wouldn’t be sitting here right now,” Doreen said as she sat with Lial on the home’s front porch. The family pets, two dogs and a cat, also escaped the home safely with help from Rockford firefighters. Volunteer Sunilkumar was one of the volunteers who installed smoke alarms in the McCullough home just months before the fireĭoreen and her family credit the smoke alarms with saving their lives and giving them extra time to escape the fire, which Doreen says was especially important for her daughter, Carmen, who is autistic. The volunteers from the installation, Sunilkumar Ravindran and Northwest Illinois Chapter board member Steve Gitz, reunited with the family in front of their fire-damaged home in October, where Doreen offered “thanks yous” and hugs to the volunteers. The Home Fire Campaign is working to improve the odds and save lives, and four lives were saved this September in Rockford thanks to working smoke alarms installed by the Red Cross. Every day, seven people die in home fires, with most victims in homes that lack working smoke alarms. “Sound the Alarm” is part of the Red Cross Home Fire Campaign initiative to install free smoke alarms in thousands of homes across the country, teach home fire safety and help families make home fire escape plans. On two different volunteers with the Red Cross had previously installed multiple smoke alarms in the McCullough home on Bildahl Street during a Red Cross “Sound the Alarm” smoke alarm installation event. Red Cross volunteers and married couple Scott and Kate comfort Doreen in the days following her home fire Photo Credit: Rockford Fire DepartmentĪ local husband and wife volunteer team, Scott Suma and Kate Rehak, responded to that fire and helped the family figure out what to do in the coming days and navigate the confusing time after a home fire. The McCullough home on Bildahl Street on September 3, 2019. Soon the Rockford Fire Department arrived and put out the fire, but not before the house was damaged to the point of being unlivable. Doreen and her husband Lial as well as their two daughters, Makila and Carmen, all sat across the street in the early morning hours and watched the home they had lived in for nearly 12 years go up in a ball of fire. The entire family escaped the house as the flames started to envelope an entire side of the home.
“All I could see was this big orange ball of fire, I mean it was huge,” Doreen said.
She went downstairs and woke up her mother, Doreen, who then woke up her other daughter, 25-year-old Carmen. As the smoke drifted in an upstairs window of the home, it set off a smoke alarm waking up 12-year-old Makila.
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