The Merritt Fire Rescue Department (MFRD) is encouraging people to be fire safe by promoting their ‘Close Before you Doze’ webinar.
“We’re promoting our annual ‘Close Before you Doze’ program,” said Krista Minar, Fire & Life Safety Educator for MFRD.
“The program is in conjunction with our Fire Prevention Week, where we talk about a lot about the use of smoke alarms and fire escape planning. This piggybacks off of that, and it also gets into a little bit of fire science to include smoke travel and the importance that a door can play in the fire escape planning process.”
As the name suggests, ‘Close Before you Doze’ outlines the importance of closing bedroom doors before going to sleep, something Minar says can play a crucial role in helping people escape a house fire.
“What it does is it just buys people time to make safe decisions about how they’re going to escape their building or their unit that they’re living in,” said Minar.
“Unfortunately, a lot of fire loss and deaths are actually contributed to smoke before the flames and heat actually impact the individuals themselves. The smoke is quite toxic, there’s a lot of carcinogens and agents that will make it difficult to breathe, and so by keeping that door closed you’re buying yourself some time.”
Fire Prevention Week educates people about smoke alarms, which Minar explains should be placed in every bedroom and used alongside a closed door for fire safety.
“We want smoke alarms in those bedrooms because if a fire starts in a bedroom and that door has been closed, now you’re waiting for it to set off the alarm in a hallway and it’s going to take quite some time to build up, and that fire then has grown quite large,” said Minar.
“There are going to be some suggestions for people who have children, family members who are hard of hearing or what to do with pets, which often comes up. People don’t want to close their doors because their animals have free range between their bedroom and the rest of their house, so we definitely have some tip and tricks for those individuals, as well as people that have younger kids. There are some new products out there that are available because not all children will respond to the sound of a smoke alarm, so they’ve gotten quite creative industry wide to help parents out with that.”
The free event is open to everyone, and anyone interested is encouraged to sign up on Zoom. Information will also be available on MFRD’s Facebook page and their website, firerescue.merritt.ca
The webinar will take place Nov. 10 at 1:00 p.m.
