(Radio Iowa) – The fire chief of a central Iowa town hopes a solution is getting closer that would stop deadly fires involving people who use oxygen.

Nevada Fire Chief Ray Reynolds. (Nevada FD photo)

Nevada fire chief Ray Reynolds says he started pushing for thermal fuses on oxygen devices after oxygen fires there that killed two people and left two others badly burned.

“Kind of got looking at this, and when we did the math, we figured out that Medicare paid one-point-two million dollars to keep those two people alive, and they could have purchased 239,000 thermal fuses that would have wiped out about ten percent of our country’s oxygen fires,” he says.

Reynolds now leads the national Home Oxygen Therapy (H.O.T.) working group that’s trying to cut the number of oxygen fires. He says the thermal fuses are inexpensive and keep the oxygen from feeding the fire and making it worse. “We just think for $4.45 cents stopping the secondary fires of clothing, couches and you know, different fuel loads that are inside homes, it might give us an opportunity to avoid some of these disasters,” Reynolds says. Reynolds says a majority of oxygen fires are started by people who smoke while using oxygen, and there’s some who say installing the fuses just encourages smoking. But he says it’s not as simple as telling someone not to smoke.

“I tell anybody, if you think you and I are going to change any smoking behavior over a four-dollar engineered solution, we’re sadly mistaken because addiction and nicotine goes way beyond what we’re doing,” he says. Reynolds says he knows from experience that people would like to stop smoking after they get sick, but struggle with it. “I’ve had a lot of people that I’ve gone in their homes to put thermal fuses in, and they’re embarrassed. They’re embarrassed they smoke. There’s social stigma to smoking. We are seeing a 50 percent reduction in smoking, but yet the same number of fires, if not more. So that tells me that we’re smoking even more unsafe,” he says.

Reynolds says another issue is the oxygen machines are a certified medical device and it takes federal approval to add the thermal fuses. “One of the things we realize is that this is going to have to be a policy decision of our country. And so we’ve actually met with the senior administrators of Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in April in Washington, D.C, and we presented a case on implementing mandatory thermal fuses for all people on oxygen,” he says. Reynolds says the meeting went well and their case is under consideration.

Reynolds says it could be a big change. “We think it’ll reduce our U.S. fire deaths by 15 percent. It’ll certainly save Medicare about $500 million that they’re currently spending on burn care,” Reynolds says. “And we’re seeing some state success. Iowa was the first state to reimburse thermal fuse installation on the Medicaid side, which is the state side of Medicare.”

The state of Washington also pays for the thermal fuses and the Department of Veterans Affairs requires their use. Reynolds says he is optimistic the issue will eventually be addressed on the federal level.