Suffering a particularly lethal year for smoking-related fire fatalities, Philadelphia in May launched an aggressive fire prevention campaign aimed specifically at smokers: “Dying for a cigarette … Take it Outside.”

Philadelphia Fire Commissioner Lloyd Ayers kicked off the effort on May 1, reporting that smoking was responsible for a quarter of the city’s fire deaths last year and 39% so far this year. Many of those killed included children, Ayers said, and the city was hurting.

“What we’re trying to do is get our citizens to take smoking outside, and to be more conscious of smoking products and how they use them if they do smoke inside,” said Ayers.

Firefighter are canvassing neighborhoods, taking a pamphlet door to door that encourages smokers to take smoking outside and also explains how to safely dispose of butts and ashes to prevent fires.

Ayers said the department is soon going to release a rap song on safe smoking it recorded in studio. “We’re trying to reach the audiences that we serve in the community, at block parties, at adult gatherings – just trying to reach the teenagers and young adults as well and cut across race and culture,” Ayers said.

As part of the campaign, Ayers also appeared with middleweight boxing champion Bernard Hopkins in a boxing ring and on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art to encourage citizens to “knock out” the city’s number-one cause of fires.

With the support of an Assistance to Firefighters Fire Prevention Grant, 110 billboards will go up around the city to help drive the message home.

“It’s a worthwhile campaign,” said Ayers. If all smokers smoked safely, it would eliminate 25% of Philadelphia’s fires.

Ayers said Deputy Commissioner John Devlin is heading up the safe-smoking program and will be monitoring its impact. For more information on Philadelphia’s safe-smoking campaign, call Devlin at 215-686-1382.

The National Picture

Philadelphia’s 39% death rate from smoking fires is more than double the national fire death rate from residential smoking, according to data analysts with the U.S. Fire Administration’s National Fire Data Center. Nationwide, smoking is the cause for about 19.2% of residential structure fire deaths, and was only recently edged out as the number-one cause of fatalities by “incendiary or suspicious” causes (22.2%) in 2002 NFIRS data.

The higher death and injury rates of residential smoking fires may be related to when and where smoking fires tend to occur, according to NFDC data analysts. Many smoking fires originate in the bedroom, late in the night when the victims are sleeping. More often than not, the victims were involved with starting the fire itself.