Fatalities up as Fire Service launches smoke alarm campaign

Fatalities up as Fire Service launches smoke alarm campaign

A working smoke alarm could have saved nearly all eight lives lost in house fires in the past two months, says the Fire Service.

Yesterday, the Fire Service began an advertising campaign aimed at driving home the importance of installing long-life photoelectric smoke alarms in all bedrooms, hallways and living rooms.

National Risk Reduction Manager Rob Saunders said the eight deaths were both unnecessary and far too high for so short a period of time, especially since last year’s total was 13, and the year before that just 10.[1]

In all eight cases, there was either no working smoke alarm or it was not in the bedroom where the fire started.

Mr Saunders said one target of the campaign was renters because more than half of all house fires, and 90 per cent of all fatal house fires, occurred in rental properties – yet rental properties accounted for just a third of the country’s housing stock.

The Fire Service is called to almost 5,500 building fires a year.

Mr Saunders said too many New Zealanders still did not have the simplest, most effective means of protecting themselves and their families against injury or death from fire.

“Most people accept that smoke alarms save lives, but frequently they don’t take that next step of buying, installing and regularly checking alarms. Our campaign aims to bridge that gap between awareness and action.

“The recent spike in fatalities highlights the fact we have more work to do in getting our smoke alarm message to high-risk groups – especially renters, at-risk families, the elderly and people living alone.”

He said the Fire Service recommended long-life photoelectric smoke alarms because they were more effective than ionisation alarms at detecting slow-smouldering as well as fast-flaming fires.

The campaign is called Your Only Voice because alarms are sleepers’ sole warning of danger at night.

Fatalities since 1 July:

• 16 July: a 77-year-old man living alone in a two-storey shed near Fox Glacier

• 19 July: a 72-year-old woman living alone in a house in Mt Wellington, Auckland

• 5 August: three members of a Nepalese family living above a restaurant in Waimate

• 5 August: a 57-year-old man living in an apartment in Panmure, Auckland

• 15 August: a 56-year-old man living alone in Waitara

• 18 August: a 38-year-old woman sharing a flat in Linwood, Christchurch.

See the three steps to getting your smoke alarm sorted at: www.youronlyvoice.org.nz

ENDS

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