by Max De Liberato
To educate the community on fire safety during Fire Prevention Week, members of Essex Fire & Rescue hosted a fire prevention night at the three local fire departments last Wednesday evening. The event gave participating youth a chance to be in the action and actually get to use a fire hose, participate in family fire truck ride-a-longs, and learn a plethora of useful fire safety and prevention tips.
This year’s Fire Prevention Week theme was “Not Every Hero Wears a Cape, Plan and Practice Your Escape!”
A house fire burns at roughly 600 degrees Celsius, according to SlideShare.net, and the best way out of such a crisis is to never have been in it, in the first place.
According to Essex Fire & Rescue, there are 70 structure fires per day across Canada, and Essex’s Deputy Assistant Chief Jason Pillon noted every single one is avoidable with proper knowledge of fire safety.
“If we had to go to a fire, we feel like we’ve failed in public education and preventing fires,” Pillon said. “We just want people to be fire safe; check your smoke alarm, check your furnaces, check your carbon monoxide alarms, open burning, just be cautious and be aware of the hazards any time you’re using any fire-related equipment or material.”
The fire service hosts fire station tours, visits with seniors, and attends all the local fairs and festivals in order to educate the community on fire safety.
“It’s huge [to educate the community] because every second counts,” Pillon said. “If your house catches on fire and your smoke alarm goes off, you have under three-minutes to get out of your house. So, we want all homes and residence to practice their home fire escape plan.”
Pillon reminded people that their fire alarms do expire and need to be replaced every 10-years.
If anyone has any questions regarding fire safety, call Essex Fire & Rescue at 519-776-7132.
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