Community-Based Safety and Prevention

Dave Renli is a pioneer in community-based safety and prevention projects.

Dave hails from Sioux Falls, South Dakota. He’s the founder of the non-profit Sioux Empire Safety Village. FIRE 20/20 is helping to promote their Fire Safety GuidesTM. They are available in English and 14 languages as both print media and videos. We interviewed Dave to learn more about how he came to see the importance of connecting to multicultural communities. Question: What did you do in your career with Sioux Falls Fire Rescue? Dave: I started as a firefighter in 1977. Seeing how injuries and deaths from fire could have been prevented got me into working in fire prevention. For 23 years, I was an inspector.

Question: How did your approach to community-based safety and prevention come about?

Dave: In the mid-1980s, I was doing community education. In the Head Start Classes, I found that there were as many interpreters as children. I was born and raised in Sioux Falls. During my childhood, pretty much everyone was native born. The changing demographics made me realize the importance of working with adults for fire safety. In the mid-90s, 65% of fire deaths were related to less than 15% of our public. In the mid-90s, 65% of fire deaths were related to multicultural groups, which made up less than 15% of our public.

Question: Why did you form Sioux Empire Safety Village?

Dave: I wrote the first Fire Safety Guide in English and wanted to get it translated into the five major foreign languages spoken in Sioux Falls at the time—Spanish, Russian, Bosnian, Nuer, and Afaan Oromo. I went to the city for money and got turned down. I decided to form a non-profit so I could get money outside of the public sector and frankly not have to deal with a lot of bureaucracy. Sioux Empire Safety Village was incorporated as a 501(c)(3) in 1998.

Question: How have you expanded your community-based safety and prevention projects?

Dave: In 2002, we got a Fire Safety & Prevention Grant from DSH. The grant allowed us to expand the number of foreign languages for the Fire Safety Guides and produce the videos. It also supported putting together our 'Power of Fire Exhibit' on the Sioux Empire Safety Village campus. Some background to that… Sioux Fire Rescue responded to a house fire within 15 minutes of tornado sirens going off. A family of Ukrainian descent lived in the house and ran outside leaving pots cooking on their stove. The small kitchen fire was quickly put out, but the house and its contents were destroyed. We turned the house into an exhibit so visitors could learn about the damage and fire safety tips. The self-guided tour is managed with a computer kiosk and lets visitors choose from English and 14 other languages.

Comment and question: Congratulations on being awarded a 2007 Fire Safety & Prevention Grant! What’s its focus?

Dave: Again, here’s some background first. In our state we have what’s called the Governor’s House program. The houses are built by prison inmates who are learning trades and sold to elderly persons with disabilities, and income-qualified families in South Dakota. The state donated a 960 square-foot house with a 24 x 24 attached garage so we can put together a Safe House project. The Safe House will include a computer kiosk and self-guided tour in multiple languages similar to what’s now in the Power of Fire exhibit. It will also include companion booklets that will cover fire safety and other home injury prevention information. Again, it will be in multiple languages. The Safe House will model the eight tenets of the National Fire Protection Association’s Risk Watch®.

Question: Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Dave: Yes! FIRE 20/20 is right on target with the importance of connecting to multicultural communities. The need for this is not just in urban areas. In our schools, over 50 languages are spoken. In 1990, 4% of our population wasn’t native-born. In 2000, that percentage was 15%.

Closing comment: Thanks, Dave! You’re one of our heroes!