You’ve checked your clocks, maybe you should check your smoke alarm
Posted November 1, 2015 1:57 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – Now that you’ve turned your clock back an hour, local fire departments say it also serves as a good reminder to check your smoke alarm.
Vancouver Fire Captain Jonathan Gormick says consider changing the batteries in the detectors.
“Smoke detectors have a 10-year life span in general. And just anecdotally speaking, I actually checked the smoke alarms in our house because I have two young sons. And we found a non-working smoke alarm in our house this year. I quickly replaced it. It’s cheap insurance. Smoke alarms are very, very inexpensive and it’s ideal to have them on not only every floor but outside the door of every sleeping quarter.”
“Kitchen fires are very, very common for obvious reasons. We go to an inordinate number of pot on the stove calls, where someone has left a pot either empty or with food in it on a hot burner and then either fallen asleep or left the area. Fortunately, most of them don’t cause fires but again kitchen fires are probably one the leading causes of fires in Canada. The other is smoking materials or candles.”
Gormick adds within the City of Vancouver, firefighters will do home safety checks for free. You can call 311 and have crews go to your house to check your home over for any hazards.
“Our staff will come out. We’ll address any specific concerns that they have and then our staff has a checklist that encompasses safety in the kitchen, safety around utilities, safety around gas appliances and carbon monoxide detectors. And if homeowners or residents don’t have a working smoke alarm, we will install a working smoke alarm free of charge.”
This program runs year-round.
