The Estevan Fire and Rescue Service wants everyone to be properly equipped to detect any potential fire hazards around their homes. This push for safety, coinciding with Fire Prevention Week, was what inspired the smoke alarm program, by which members of the department go door-to-door, checking to see if everyone’s smoke alarms and smoke detection equipment are functional and up to date.
“A number of years ago, our fire fighters came up with this idea to go around and make sure every house had a working smoke alarm,” said deputy fire Chief Dale Feser. “Since then it has caught on right across Canada. The fire department picks certain areas of the city to canvas.
We try to effectively accomplish total coverage of the city.”
If allowed entry into each home they visit, department members test the smoke alarms on the premises. If the alarm has a dead battery, the firefighters will replace it, free of charge. If the alarm is older than 10 years, the department will replace it with a new fully functional one. If the residence doesn’t have an alarm at all, Feser said the fire department will install one, free of charge.
“What we want to see, number one, is that everyone has a working smoke alarm,” said Feser. “It’s much more effective for somebody to have the early detection of an emergency occurring within their home, so they can safely escape their home.”
This year, there has been a higher than usual number of homes without proper smoke alarms in place in Estevan. While going door to door, fire department members actually started running low on detectors. Chief Shane Code said this year, members were able to cover approximately six to eight city blocks, and replaced 17 smoke detectors.
“I was surprised, quite frankly, that we had to replace so many in such a small space,” said Code. “I assumed, which is a dangerous word, that most people with newer homes have good detectors, but we found a number that were aged and not working, and replaced the batteries in detectors in many more homes.”
“Make sure they’re functioning properly. Just the first night alone, we installed upwards of 20 smoke alarms,” said Feser. “Some of them were over 10 years of age. We replaced them to make sure everything was working properly. A few had dead batteries. There were a few residences that didn’t have any at all.”
Progress for the program this year, which began on the evening of Oct. 6, has been good, Feser noted. This year, members of the department have started to overlap, revisiting some of the areas and residences first visited when the program was initiated more than a decade ago.
“On average we’ll attend to a home, but if they have a monitored system in place, such as the Vivint or Reliance alarm systems, typically, we don’t bother, because those people already have a fully functional alarm system monitoring for carbon dioxide and smoke,” Feser said. “So, what we do is for the homes that don’t already have these particular types of systems in place.”
Feser explains members of the fire department do their door-to-door knocking between the hours of 7 p.m. and 9 p.m., “because we’re sympathetic to the fact that a lot of people have children. We don’t want to disturb their sleep patterns.”
To the community of Estevan, Feser recommends that everyone check the batteries in their smoke alarms at least once a month. He said that if anyone has any questions about their fire alarm, to not hesitate in contacting the Estevan Fire and Rescue Service.
