Fire Prevention Week marked by firefighters

By Mark Ribble

LEAMINGTON — October 3-9 is Fire Prevention Week in Canada and Leamington Fire Services will spend the week traveling throughout the municipality engaging residents to talk about fire safety.

This year’s theme is ‘Learn the Sound of Fire Safety’ and focuses on the noises made by smoke alarms and CO alarms alike.

The fire department will be set up from 10 am to 2 pm all week with remaining stops at Home Hardware Leamington on Wednesday, Home Building Centre Leamington on Thursday, Rona Leamington on Friday and Canadian Tire on Saturday.

Leamington Fire Inspector Derrick Clark says the sounds are important and how you react to them is even more important.

Clark says the fire department is there to provide service in educating and updating resident on their fire safety equipment.

The table has an array of smoke alarms, CO alarms and fire safety giveaways including plastic fire helmets for the youngsters.

Members of Leamington Fire Services were in front of the station on Monday, October 4 promoting fire safety. From left are firefighters Tim Weil, Ali Alyissary, Todd Stahl, Ron Duford, Derrick Clark and Scott McCallum. In front is Sparky (Iman Dominguez).

SUN photo

Clark says that the alarms have come a long way since they were first introduced.

“It’s important to keep up-to-date and within code,” he said.

He said building codes have been updated over the years and many people are choosing photo-electric alarms over the traditional ionized alarms.

According to Clark, the ionized alarms can go off when the toaster burns your toast, or when the oven starts to smoke or even when you get out of the shower.

This prompts some people to disconnect their alarms, which puts their family in danger.

The newer photo-electric alarms look for particles of smoke before going off, which Clark says is a big bonus.

“We encourage people to spend a little bit more for and get those photo-electric alarms,” he said. “It’s worth it for as little as $10 more.”’

Clark said the department is also signing people up for their new Leamington Alert System, which collects your contact information and allows them to contact you if there is a fire or other emergency in your neighbourhood.

“If there is a fire or event in your neighbourhood and we feel you need to know about it, we can send out an alert to your phone or other device to alert you of it,” he said.

The alerts could take the form of phone calls or text messages.

If interested in signing up, be sure to visit their tent at various locations this week or call 519-326-5761.