Firefighters promote prevention in East Austin neighborhood
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Firefighters returned to an East Austin neighborhood Wednesday where a house fire earlier this week injured four people, three of them children.
"The fire was very telling to us, in that there were no working smoke alarms found in the location,” AFD Division Chief David Bailey said. “It's our fear that's the situation for many homes in Austin."
Teams fanned out to knock on doors near the location of Monday's fire on East 14th Street. Their goal was to fight fires before they start by installing smoke detectors.
Any home that didn't have working detectors got new ones.
"They're super cheap,” AFD Lt. Josh Portie said. “They're extremely effective, and unfortunately the statistics tell us, inside the city and nationally, that fire fatalities are often times directly related as a result of not having working smoke alarms."
Investigators are still figuring out what started Monday's fire. Two girls and one elderly man remain in critical condition from inhalation burns.