I went downstairs to spend some time on my computer a few nights ago when I got quite a shock.
The kids had been playing on the Nintendo, and to make room, they moved some stuff out of the way. One thing happened to be a two-foot by two-foot plastic table that was used for building Lego when they were small.
Katrina, not knowing better, put it up against the glass panel of the gas fireplace. When I came downstairs, the fireplace was going, having kicked in due to the thermostat.
The plastic table was hot to the touch. Another hour or two, it would have either melted, or caught fire. If I had gone to bed early, as I had been considering, we would be homeless now.
There were some harsh words on fire safety, and a legitimate, “I didn’t know,” from the chastised daughter.
It came to me in a flood, all the stories I had heard from both of my parents. You see, each of them lost their house, and essentially everything, due to a fire when they were young.
The origin of both fires was the chimney. Mom’s blaze was when she was four or five. They lost everything.
Dad was around 15. The family ended up living in the garage while rebuilding.
Mom pointed out that kids today don’t have a lot of experience with fire. They don’t grow up splitting wood for wood stoves. In our sanitized existence, you push a button on the wall, and you get heat. As a result, there’s not much “common sense” when they have little exposure to it in the first place.
Fire safety has come a long ways. Smoke alarms are commonplace and required. Most communities have proper fire protection service, but not everyone. First Nations unfortunately are still way behind on this front, despite the fact fires tend to be common occurrences on reserves.
Last week we had yet another tragedy of people dying on a First Nation due to inadequate fire protection, this time at Makwa Sahgaiehcan First Nation. A two-year-old boy and one-year-old girl died in a house fire Feb. 17. Calls to a neighbouring community’s tiny volunteer fire department went unanswered due to unpaid bills. The First Nation had a truck, but no equipment or people trained to use it.
This is strikingly similar to a tragic fire about 10 or 11 years ago on Sweetgrass First Nation. Their calls were rebuffed by the City of North Battleford Fire and Protective Services because that band, too, had not taken care of the paperwork beforehand and had not signed an agreement for the provision of assistance. Their own fire truck wouldn’t start, and there was no one to run it.
In both cases, it’s doubtful a response by the neighbouring community would have made a difference given how long it would take to deploy in a meaningful way, and those lives would likely have been lost anyhow. But if the communities where these fires had taken place, the First Nations themselves, had maintained some sort of adequate fire protection services of their own, maybe that would have made a difference.
The reality is that one lapse in judgment can be catastrophic, from kids playing with matches to careless placement of a toy near the fireplace.
So this weekend we will again be doing fire drills in this house. I will be picking up a new, larger fire extinguisher to complement the three small ones we already have. I’ll also be getting a new carbon monoxide detector and smoke alarm, too, just in case.
I’d hate to see history repeat itself.
— Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at [email protected]
