A fire department’s role has evolved dramatically since Benjamin Franklin helped establish the Union Fire Company in Philadelphia in 1736. Firefighters still fight fires, but the modern forces they battle day to day tend to be more fundamental than elemental.

“I think we are continually becoming more community focused and trying to deliver the service the community needs, in the time and manner in which they need it,” said Colorado Springs Fire Chief Ted Collas. “A firefighter looks around the community and notices somebody in need and that there’s a gap, they’ll look for ways to fill that gap.”

The free distribution and installation of smoke alarms started almost 30 years ago, when now-retired firefighter Tom Leland noticed a discouraging common denominator in many of the houses to which the department was being called.

“He’s the one who had the idea: If smoke alarms save lives, why don’t we just give them to some of these folks in these neighborhoods who need them?” Collas said. “It started kind of a groundswell thing and took root, and now we’re doing it all over town.”

Today, the department and the Springs-based chapter of the American Red Cross canvass at-risk neighborhoods every year, with volunteers distributing and installing smoke alarms, changing alarm batteries and helping residents and families develop emergency plans.

“Things like that, they’re just the right things to do,” said Collas, whose department has been recognized with this year’s First Responder Organization Hometown Heroes Award by the American Red Cross.

Though the department doesn’t track such things officially, Collas said smoke alarms installed during a canvassing event at Canterbury mobile home park did their job when a residence there later caught fire.

“There was enough smoke that it triggered the alarms and alerted the folks next door so they could get out safely,” Collas said. “The fire never jumped, and there ended up being no property loss for them, but definitely enough smoke came in that it could have hurt them.”

The department’s Community Education and Outreach Division focuses on risk reduction, in part through fire alarm distribution drives and targeted talks and training events at clubs, businesses, schools and medical centers. Each year, the division’s three officers share messages that reach about 20,000 people, said supervisor Sunny Smaldino.

“Our whole goal is changing behavior so we don’t have accidents, emergencies, fires or unnecessary calls into emergency services,” said Smaldino, who also leads a program working with young arson offenders. “We want people to not have a bad day, and part of that is making sure they have smoke alarms, that they work and are installed in all the right spots in a home. The other part is continuing education.” On average, seven lives are lost in home fires each day in the U.S.

“Ask your kids what their emergency escape plan is at school, and they’ll tell you, ‘Oh, we go to Miss Johnson, we go here, we wait here.’ Now ask a group of adults when’s the last time they practiced a home escape plan, and nobody raises their hand,” she said. “Why is it when we live on our own we don’t have to practice these things we’ve been doing our whole lives? Muscle memory is what saves us in an emergency.”