Fire Prevention

It’s somewhat “newsworthy” when a week goes by that we don’t see or hear about a significant fire in a building under construction, renovation, or demolition. That’s because such fire incidents take place more often than most of us realize. In recent months, there have been fires in commercial buildings being renovated in Idaho, in a former Sony building in New Jersey being demolished and in multiple apartment buildings under construction across the U.S., including high profile incidents in Las Vegas and Texas.

By: Robert Avsec, Executive Fire Officer Tanya Bettridge My fire service colleague Tanya Bettridge is the Captain for Public Education at Mississauga (ON) Fire and Emergency Services. But more than that, she’s an extraordinary communicator when it comes to developing effective fire and life safety messages for the public. Here I’ve borrow a piece that she posted over on LinkedIn ...

By: Robert Avsec, Executive Fire Officer https://thesaurus.plus/img/antonyms/217/inoculate.png Well, is it? Are you and your family inoculated against preventable fires? You may think that it’s enough that you inform yourself about how to prevent fires and act to improve and protect your environment (e.g., your home or business) from a preventable fire. But you probably live in a community with other ...

By: Tanya Bettridge, Guest Blogger, Public Educator The number of smoke/CO alarms, that are either given away or outright installed by fire departments in communities across the planet, shocks me. The fire service tends to revolve the “install or not” conversation around the issue of liability; I prefer to look at it as “what are we trying to address?” Anyone who ...

By: Robert Avsec, Executive Fire Officer ICYMI, here are Part I and Part II of this four-part series this week. Now if you’ve been following along, you know that the focus here is how you and your department can develop some better strategies for teaching children and adults how to avoid becoming a victim of a preventable fire. Because we ...

By: Robert Avsec, Executive Fire Officer ICYMI, here’s Part I of this four-part series this week. Photo courtesy of NFPA.org Now if you’ve read Part I, you know that the focus here is how you and your department can develop some better strategies for teaching children and adults how to avoid becoming a victim of a preventable fire. Because we ...

By: Robert Avsec Source: NFPA.org DYK, it’s only 17 weeks until the beginning of National Fire Prevention Week 2019? Hard to believe, right? Seems like it was just last week (But truth be known, it should seem like it was just last week, as every week should be Fire Prevention Week, am I right?). So, what will you and your ...

This is not some “pipe dream” of mine. There is such a system and it’s been available for the better part of the last five years. It’s the Fire-ED Interactive System developed by my colleague Tracy Last. And if you don’t know Tracy and the Fire-ED Interactive System, then you don’t know fire and life safety education for the 21st century.

By: Robert Avsec, Executive Fire Officer Since 1966, most states have changed the clocks twice a year to save an hour of daylight. Love it or hate it, daylight saving time is coming up again. When you fall back an hour on November 5th, I want you to take an action to move fire safety forward when you move the ...

If we truly want to eradicate preventable fires, we must start by using language that clearly identifies the responsible party; it’s not the fire, it’s the person whose improper behavior created the conditions that enabled the fire to start.