The Columbia Fire Department and Columbia Professional Fire Fighters Local 1055 are on an alert to make sure all homes in Columbia have smoke alarms.

"Smoke alarms save lives," said Brad Fraizer of Columbia Professional Fire Fighters. "If someone living in their home isn't able to get a smoke alarm, we will either replace a bad smoke alarm, we will install smoke alarms where there are none, or we'll replace batteries."

And they'll do it for free.

This year, 51 percent of house fires in Columbia happened in homes without working smoke alarms.

"The quicker the home owners notify the fires, certainly the quicker they can escape. But also quicker that fire is reported, which we can get there and extinguish the fire and reduce that property damage," said Capt. Eric Hartman of the Columbia Fire Department.

Smoke alarms failed to go off at two fires in the last two weeks. Capt. Hartman said one of the houses had two smoke alarms missing batteries and the others had problems with the brackets, not the actual alarms.

"Your risk of death in a fire is reduced by 50 percent if you have a properly functioning smoke alarm installed," said Hartman.

Fire officials will offer the program as long as possible to make sure all homes have fire alarms.Officials also say people should test smoke alarms every month and replace batteries every year.