(Radio Iowa) – In recent years, Iowans have dealt with deadly tornadoes and historic flooding, but the biggest disaster for the Iowa chapter of the American Red Cross during 2025 has been house fires. Josh Murray is spokesman for the agency in Iowa and says fires are breaking out somewhere in the state almost daily, sometimes two a day, and it only gets worse during the winter. “So far in 2025, we’ve responded to just about 600 home fires. That’s affecting more than 2,000 people,” Murray says. “We’re thankful to our volunteers who get out there and help those people, whether it’s finding them some temporary accommodations, giving them some blankets and snacks, something to take care of them, trying to help them as they sit there and sift through and figure out what their next steps are.”

Murray says Red Cross home fire responses spike nearly 20-percent nationwide during the holidays, when families face increased risks of fire. “That continues to be where we do see most of our time spent in the disaster response world, it’s those home fires that are happening every day, and not just single home fires, apartment fires happen, too,” Murray says. “This is that time of year when people are inside more, they’re cooking more, they’re using heating supplies more, they’re using space heaters or starting up their fireplaces more. That’s when we oftentimes see that pickup.” In an effort to prevent more home fires, the agency installed more than 16-hundred free smoke alarms in Iowa this year, and checked the batteries in hundreds of existing smoke alarms.

KJAN file photo

“People didn’t know they didn’t have them or, ‘I have them, they’re there,’ but then when we went and checked them, they didn’t work,” Murray says. “We want to make sure we are able to have those, that you have working smoke alarms. Those are really lifesavers — if they work. We want to make sure we have those available and anybody who needs it or wants us to check it, go to redcross.org, find out how you can have someone come out and help you with that.”

This holiday season, Murray urges Iowans to visit redcross-dot-org to make a financial donation — or to give back through volunteering.