Law firm donates smoke detectors

Have smoke alarms in your home?

There’s no reason not to.

The Seguin Fire Department has partnered with a San Antonio law firm to try to make sure every home in this city is protected by a smoke detector.

The law firm, Wayne Wright Lawyers, which has offices in San Antonio, Houston, Austin and Corpus Christi, has made a commitment to Seguin to provide smoke detectors for residents. The initiative was announced Thursday afternoon at a press conference conducted at Fire Station 2 on State Highway 46. It was attended by Mayor Betty Ann Matthies, Fire Chief Scott Mycue, Assistant City Manager Ricardo Cortes and attorney Wyatt Wright of Wayne Wright Lawyers.

In thanking the attorney, Mycue said his department has tried several times without success to obtain grant money to provide smoke and fire alarms for local residents.

“We’ve never had the opportunity to provide our citizens with free smoke alarms,” Mycue said. “This is a much-needed program for our community, and we’re very excited about this new partnership with Wayne Wright Lawyers.”

Mycue said he did not know how many Seguin homes lacked smoke detectors.

But Wayne Wright Lawyers, he said, has committed to begin with 1,000 and “go from there.”

Firefighters will install them on Saturdays, he said, because that is when they would expect homeowners to be present for the work.

“We’ll try to get to as many of them as we can on Saturdays and still do our regular job,” Mycue said.

Attorney Wyatt Wright said the law firm headed by his father began the initiative, called “Smoke Alarms in Every Home,” in San Antonio in December after the death of State Senator Frank Madla and two of his family members in a fire.

“It’s not that Senator Madla’s death was any more important than any of the other 890 people who died last year in fires,” Wright said. “But what it did do was get the subject off page 20 and onto page one.”

So far, Wright said, his law firm has provided 60,000 smoke detectors in 21 cities. He didn’t know what the initiative has cost.

“We haven’t reduced this to a budget,” Wright said. “The cost doesn’t really matter. We do it as long as we can. For us, it’s a natural. It might not work in all cases, but this simple, inexpensive device can prevent loss of life. We want to give them to everyone who needs them.”

All anyone who needs a smoke detector needs do is call his firm at (210) 734-7077, and their name and address will be forwarded to the SFD, which will make contact and go out and install the detectors, which also act as fire alarms.

A smoke detector, Wright said, doubles the chance of survival in a residential fire. The good thing about having the Seguin Fire Department involved in the project, he said, was that firemen understood how to install the devices correctly.

“We don’t want them to end up on shelves in garages,” Wright said. “The firemen will install them. When they come out, they might give you other suggestions such as, ‘you have 14 cords plugged into that outlet and it’s not a good idea.’ The real heroes of this program will be the Seguin firefighters who will go out and do this.”

Like Mycue, Matthies thanked Wright for his work on behalf of Seguin residents.

“I know I speak for all the citizens of Seguin in saying thank you,” Matthies said. “It’s a very innovative program, and a very generous one, and I know it will be a very, very important part of saving lives.”

Mycue agreed.

“We’re very proud of our partnership with Wayne Wright Lawyers,” Mycue said. “Citizen safety is our utmost concern and this is a big step in the right direction.”
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