Have you though lately about fire prevention?
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 27/07/2018 (1768 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
On the morning of July 16 I heard on the radio that traffic was blocked near Day Street due to a fire in an apartment block on Kildare Avenue East. One person was sent to hospital in critical condition as a result.
It got me to thinking about my own experiences with fire, both of which were thankfully minor events.
When I lived in an apartment, I once put the kettle on the stove to make tea and sat on the couch while it heated up. A few minutes later, I caught a reflection of flames in the living room window. I had inadvertently turned on the wrong element and an empty plastic watering can on the stove had caught fire.
I grabbed a box of baking soda and was able to put it out. There was black ash everywhere and a horrible chemical smell but no further damage.
The other incident happened one Christmas as I was getting the turkey out of the oven. My cloth oven mitts grazed the bottom element and I didn’t even notice they were on fire until my brother said, “you’re on fire!”
I dabbed the mitt into the sink, which was full of water. But he said, “you’re still on fire!”
My loose sweatpants had been swiped by the burning oven mitt and caught fire at my knees, so I slapped myself with the wet oven mitt.
They sound rather comical now, but either incident could have quickly escalated into something worse, all because of my own carelessness.
Some fires are unpreventable, such as lightning strikes or unexpected wiring shortages in electrical appliances.
However, many can be avoided with planning and due diligence. Everybody knows to make sure your smoke alarms are in working order, but how often do you actually check?
If you live in an apartment, make sure you are familiar with the evacuation procedures that should be posted on each floor, and never ignore a fire alarm.
When I lived in an apartment, I recall everybody poking their heads into the hallway to see what was going on when an alarm rang. We all went back inside if nothing was evident.
But you should always leave the premises. If it is false alarm, all you will miss is a few minutes outside but, if it’s real, ignoring an alarm may mean you may have lost precious time to evacuate safely.
We’ve all been trained as children what to do if there is a fire but do we still pay heed to those precautions as adults?
If you haven’t given it much thought lately, it may be a good idea to visit the Winnipeg Fire Department fire prevention page at www.winnipeg.ca/fps/FirePrevention
It offers good tips, such as, “Do not extinguish cigars or cigarettes in potted plants. Potting soil and peat moss can be flammable.”
I did not know that!
Suzanne Hunter is a community correspondent for Transcona.