October 4–10 is Fire Prevention Week, and the Niverville Fire Department is once again getting the word out about fire safety.
Fire Chief Keith Bueckert says that the department will be paying visits to the elementary school through-out the week, speaking to the Kindergarten through Grade 4 classes. They’ll be making presentations and handing out literature for the kids to take home. The kids who take that literature home, talk about fire safety with their parents, and get their parents to sign the forms will be entered into a draw for a new Nintendo DS. The class with the most returned forms will be treated to a free pizza lunch.
Among the activities parents are asked to do is rehearse the family’s fire escape plan, check the batteries in all smoke detectors, and make sure there are two ways out of each sleeping area in the house. Bueckert also reminds us that we should check and change the batteries in our smoke detectors at the same time each year that we change our clocks for Daylight Savings Time.
This year, the focus of Fire Prevention Week is on educating people about the importance of installing
smoke detectors in all sleeping areas, which is already a mandate for new constructions. There should be at least one smoke detector per floor, as well as a heat detector in the garage.
Bueckert says there are frequently new innovations in fire prevention technology. One such innovation is voice-recorded fire alarms. In addition to broadcasting a siren, parents can program these alarms to play back their own voice recordings. For example, “Johnny, this is your mom! There’s a fire! Get out of the house!” The idea is that children may be more likely to respond to familiar voices than just the siren by itself.
