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CENTERVILLE, IOWA -- After eight fires in just over three weeks, the American Red Cross teamed up with the Centerville Fire Department on Saturday to hit the streets and educate the community on how to protect themselves from fires and upcoming winter weather.

“We thought this would be a great opportunity for us to turn a negative situation into a positive and capitalize in having a teachable moment for the community. So we reached out to Captain Vern Milburn and Chief Bogle and had a conversation about how can we do something good for the community to capitalize on the negative attention that’s  happened in and around the community,” said Tony Burke, American Red Cross.

“We have probably 60 or 70 volunteers out now on the streets putting up information. Our plan is to go door-to-door to every door in Centerville, 2,241 homes, to get the information out. And also what we're doing is anyone interested in smoke detectors in residential homes in the city of Centerville or in our area, they can contact us. They'll be a note in the packets themselves, telling them or they can contact us and we'll also come and install a smoke detector in their home,” said Capt. Vern Milburn, Centerville Fire Department.

“This is a great opportunity to really tell people, to empower them to essentially make their home safer, make their community safer. The reality is, no matter what the disaster is, sometimes when we're overwhelmed we may not get emergency response right away. If we have a major winter storm, power outage of 10,000 people, our emergency services are going to be strapped so we want to empower those people to be ready for a minimum 72 hours and really ready to go -- have your preparedness kit ready, have your escape plan ready to go, have you emergency contacts ready to go, be prepared for anything that will come your way because really it’s up to you to be empowered to do the right things for you and your family,” said Burke.