BALTIMORE (AP) -- Walking past the burned-out shell of a rowhouse is a reminder for Shantee Hall and her 6-year-old daughter -- they need to make a plan for getting out of their new home if there's a fire.
Hall and her daughter, Adrian Bridgers, just moved to the Southwest Baltimore neighborhood where the scarred rowhouse sits in the middle of a block on South Monroe Street. Hall said they recently heard about the January fire that killed brothers Tyrone Hammond, 18, and Kevin Smith, 7, as well as their niece, 5-year-old Jasmine Wells. The boys' mother escaped by jumping from a second-floor window.
The windows are now boarded up. Dozens of messages written on the melted blue siding are beginning to fade. ``Dear God, why did you take them?'' one reads.
``People need to take more precautions,'' Hall said. She said her family had a smoke detector and an exit plan for their old home but don't have either yet at their new place.
Firefighting agencies hope to reach families like Hall's with a new nationwide campaign to prevent deaths. It was prompted by a new Federal Emergency Management Agency analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data from 1989 to 1998, which found fires are the No. 1 cause of unintentional death for black children nationwide under the age of 5.
The analysis determined that black children under five in Maryland were four times as likely to die in a house fire than the rest of the state's black population, a rate that was the highest in the United States. Only Illinois matched that rate.
Nationwide, black babies and toddlers are more than two and a half times as likely to die in a residential fire than the rest of the black population, according to the report. The rate drops slightly for children of all races who are younger than five to more than twice the rest of the nation's population.
The Baltimore Fire Department had a record of installing a smoke detector in the Hammond house in the months before the fire, but investigators could not find it afterward, said department spokesman Kevin Cartwright.
Smoke detector installation, having an escape plan and keeping matches away from kids are the focus of the awareness campaign, said Johnny Brewington, a Cleveland firefighter who is president of the International Association of Black Professional Firefighters.
While the analysis focused on black children, Brewington said people of all races who live in poverty are at risk because smoke alarms are less prevalent in their homes.
``Most people think this could never happen to them,'' he said. ``It could happen, and there are solutions to either eliminating or minimizing this problem.''
FEMA is distributing public service announcements to newspapers and magazines across the country that target minority readers. A photo of a girl in a crib is captioned, ``Love alone didn't save her, practicing fire safety did.''
Brewington said he is also talking with fire chiefs in areas with significant black populations about making face-to-face contact with residents to get the point across.
A rash of fatal fires involving children early this year in Baltimore prompted city firefighters and others across the state to renew safety efforts. They launched a smoke-alarm distribution blitz this spring in poor neighborhoods.
``It was apparent how uneducated our community was about fire safety,'' Cartwright said.
Nine of Baltimore's 26 fire fatalities this year have been children, he said.
``That's a lot of talent this country won't ever be able to utilize,'' Brewington said.
He said the best way to solve the problem is for parents to model good behaviors for their children, including putting lighters and matches out of reach.
``It's not unnatural to see a match or a lighter in a home,'' Brewington said. ``Children, I assure you, know where lighters and matches are in their home.''
