5 Towns leaders push fire safety aids

After Shabbos ended on March 21, Rabbi Heshy Blumstein of the Young Israel of Hewlett and his family began preparing their home for Pesach. He covered the stove’s burners with a thick sheet of tin.

“I didn’t open the windows and the carbon monoxide sensor went on. I was in fear for my family,” Blumstein said of a household that ranges in age from 2 to nearly 90. The Woodmere Fire Department responded, the rabbi said, and all was well afterward. Carbon monoxide is a potentially fatal poisonous gas.

Blumstein was one of several speakers at the Woodmere firehouse last Friday who focused on household safety in the wake of the home fire in Brooklyn’s Midwood neighborhood that killed seven children and left their mother and their sole surviving sibling seriously injured. A warming plate used to keep food hot during Shabbos malfunctioned, according to city fire officials. There were no working smoke detectors found on the first or second floor of the house.

Civic leaders throughout the Five Towns have begun a campaign to raise awareness of the importance of having functioning smoke and carbon monoxide detectors in homes. 

Achiezer partnered with the Woodmere department to host a free, two-hour fire safety clinic at Achiezer’s Lawrence office on Sunday. More than 100 free smoke detectors were available for people who needed them, and Woodmere firefighters handed out fire safety information. 

“It’s a tragedy that is supposed to leave us with a lasting effect,” Achiezer founder and president Rabbi Boruch Ber Bender said of the Brooklyn fire. “Learn what you should and shouldn’t do [in an emergency].” 

Cedarhurst, in collaboration with Home Depot, will provide hundreds of free, state-of-the-art, battery-operated smoke detectors to residents, said Mayor Benjamin Weinstock.