This years theme for fire prevention week is “Plan you escape, fire won’t wait”. Our goal is simple and straight forward, we want to make our community the safest it can be. Knowing and practicing fire safety can literally mean the difference between life and death, we want to give you and your family all the tools and knowledge to make your home safe.
Todays homes burn a lot faster and hotter compared 50 years and that drastically reduces the amount of time that you have to make an escape during an emergency situation. Underwriters Laboratories (UL) has done a lot of testing to help the fire service come up with the most effective ways to keep our families safe. We know that closing a bedroom door can reduce the temperature in a bedroom by nearly 300c during a house fire and reduce the CO to safe levels.
If a person cannot safely exit a room through the door we teach them to put a blanket or cloths along the bottom of the door to help prevent smoke and harmful chemicals from entering the room. We want you to turn on the light in that room to help us know that the room is or was occupied, it helps the firefighters know how many occupants we need to account for. Its important to make sure that the people in your home know how to safely exit out a window, make sure to have a piece of furniture near the window to assist them if needed and that they know how to open that window.
This year some new rules came into effect for smoke alarms (July 1, 2022). ALL homes in Saskatchewan must now have a smoke alarm on every level of their home as well as in every bedroom, a bedroom is a room with a closet and window. All of the smoke alarms must be interconnected meaning that if 1 goes off, they all go off. You must also have a CO alarm in your home if you use combustible fuels (Natural Gas or Propane) for heating or cooking. If the alarms are being added to a home they can be battery operated but must have a 10 year battery, if its new construction they must be hard wired. For more information, please visit the Saskatchewan governments web page, look for carbon monoxide and smoke alarms, near the bottom of that page is a link to a brochure that fully outlines everything for each type of building.
Be sure to stop and see us, we are often out in the community with our Public Education team and we would love to help and make you and your home a little safer.
- plan your escape, fire wont wait
- close before you doze
- get out and stay out
- check your smoke alarms, what do you have to loose?
- stand by your pan, put a lid on stove top fires.
Mitch Hope, Deputy Fire Chief
Protective Services, Public Education
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