After tragic loss of wife, children, Texas man pushes for legislation to require visual fire alarms for deaf people in apartments

From the intro to a story in the Dallas Morning News:

AUSTIN – When the raging late-night electrical fire broke out, Tyrus Burks, who is deaf, couldn't hear an alarm sound. The alarm's flashing light – tucked by apartment managers into a stairwell – also didn't wake him or his sleeping wife.

By the time the flames reached him, it was all he could do to rouse his oldest sons from bed. (He is pictured with them.) When his mother arrived at the scene of the West Dallas apartment blaze, she found Tyrus curled in the fetal position on the asphalt, his deaf high school sweetheart and two more of their children trapped inside.

Four years after Tyrus, now 31, lost half of his family in that fire, he is determined to save other deaf people from a similar fate. He was in Austin last week pushing legislation to require property managers to install fire alarms with flashing lights in the bedrooms and common areas of hearing-impaired people who request them – a bill named for his wife, Sephra.

"I wasn't able to find my babies and wife and save them," Tyrus told lawmakers through a sign language interpreter. "If I had just had a little bit more time, I know they would be with me today."

Today, the state property code requires landlords to install audible smoke alarms, not visual ones.

The Sephra Burks bill, authored by Dallas Sen. Royce West, requires property managers to buy and install visual smoke alarms if a tenant with a hearing impairment requests it – and to put them in highly visible locations, including bedrooms.

The bill awaits a vote in both the House and the Senate.

Apartment managers say they support the bill and can handle the expense. The deaf routinely wake up to flashing lights – it's how many of their alarm clocks are outfitted. And studies show audible smoke alarms often aren't loud enough to wake children younger than 10.

"We feel like it is certainly the right thing to do," said George Allen, executive vice president of the Texas Apartment Association. "We just want to make sure when the request is made that there is a real need for the device."