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Thursday, July 10, 2025

Train occupants to be fire wardens on their floors

by

20120107

One of the main things a safe­ty prac­ti­tion­er learns is that when ac­ci­dents oc­cur, you must learn from them and en­sure there isn't a re­cur­rence. We can­not bring back those that died in the Laven­tille fire but we can en­sure their death is used for some­thing pos­i­tive. To save as many lives as pos­si­ble and cre­ate that change when it comes to safe guard­ing our homes. How many fam­i­lies have emer­gency evac­u­a­tion pro­ce­dures for their homes? How many of them will spend small mon­ey to in­vest in a fire ex­tin­guish­er and smoke de­tec­tor?

The Web site youtube has videos on how to use fire ex­tin­guish­ers but how many will view them in­stead of a video of Nicky Mi­naj? Many will come now and say it will nev­er hap­pen in my home, un­til it is too late. How many re-in­spect the wiring in their home every 5 years as is re­quired? But yet we quick to point fin­gers at T&TEC. If a risk as­sess­ment was to be con­duct­ed I am pos­i­tive the haz­ards that ex­ist in many of our homes will be too many to count. How­ev­er, it is good to see that some­thing is be­ing done about en­sur­ing these HDC build­ings have some lev­el of safe­ty com­pli­ance. I don't know what kind of crazy per­son will build these high rise build­ings and not in­clude an al­ter­na­tive es­cape route. I guess fires nev­er ex­ist­ed when they were built.

The line min­is­ter for HDC al­so men­tioned the same thing I post­ed a few weeks ago on this same fo­rum. It is great to in­stall fire ex­tin­guish­ers but res­i­dents must be trained in how to prop­er­ly use them. He al­so went on to state the in­stal­la­tion of fire hoses, smoke de­tec­tors and the prop­er train­ing of res­i­dents in evac­u­a­tion pro­ce­dures. The fire ser­vices should co-or­di­nate month­ly fire drills un­til the res­i­dents can do it with their eyes close. HDC should al­so en­sure month­ly checks are con­duct­ed on all fire ex­tin­guish­ers, smoke de­tec­tors and en­sur­ing the evac­u­a­tion routes are al­ways clear of clut­ter, es­pe­cial­ly from trip and fall haz­ards. Con­sid­er­a­tion can al­so be made for the in­stal­la­tion of a sprin­kler sys­tem at these HDC build­ings.

Es­tab­lish­ing of Muster Points is al­so crit­i­cal and mas­sive, yet ad­e­quate sig­nage will be need­ed. I will al­so rec­om­mend that floor plans be post­ed up on each floor that will iden­ti­fy "where you are now," where the ex­ist­ing fire fight­ing equip­ment are on that floor, di­rec­tion­al ar­rows on how to evac­u­ate and where to as­sem­ble. Train a few res­i­dents to be fire war­dens for their floors as well. Print pam­phlets with all emer­gency num­bers such as fire ser­vices, TTPS, am­bu­lance, T&TEC and many oth­ers. These num­bers can al­so be put up in heav­i­ly traf­ficked ar­eas so they can be reg­u­lar­ly viewed. With the as­sis­tance of the Red Cross, train some res­i­dents in CPR, First Aid and AED. Imag­ine a cer­ti­fied neigh­bour sav­ing an un­re­spon­sive adult or a chok­ing ba­by?

Even though HDC will train per­sons on all as­pects of fire safe­ty they al­so need to in­cor­po­rate in their train­ing, "how to evac­u­ate should a nat­ur­al dis­as­ter take place such as an earth­quake or even flood­ing." Not to men­tion those res­i­dents that may be dis­abled, giv­ing spe­cial con­sid­er­a­tion on the de­vel­op­ment of pro­ce­dures for them. All in all this is a pos­i­tive move in the right di­rec­tion and I do hope many get se­ri­ous be­fore it is too late. We al­so have to be re­spon­si­ble for our own well-be­ing and where pos­si­ble, ed­u­cate each oth­er. I al­ways en­force that train­ing is the key in high pres­sure sit­u­a­tions. Knowl­edge is the pow­er and the pow­er can in­deed save lives.

Here are some tips dur­ing a fire:

• Call the fire de­part­ment as soon as you no­tice the fire. Even if the smoke alarms are not go­ing off yet. The soon­er they know of the fire the faster they can ar­rive and pre­vent dam­age.

• If you are in a build­ing that is on fire,check the door be­fore you open it. If you can feel the heat than it is not safe to open the door. Find an­oth­er ex­it if pos­si­ble.

• Use sweater,shirt,or tow­el to help re­duce smoke in­hala­tion. If you can wet the clothe with wa­ter it will be even bet­ter at stop­ping the smoke from hurt­ing your lungs.

• If you are stuck in a high-rise build­ing, break a win­dow and hang a sweater or shirt out of it to let al­low the fire­men to find your po­si­tion faster.

• Stay as close to the floor as you can. The smoke should rise to the ceil­ing leav­ing the clean­est air clos­ets to the floors.

• Once you have made it out of the build­ing do not go back in un­til the au­thor­i­ties say it is safe to do so. Fires can be ex­treme­ly dead­ly if you do not use your head. Al­ways re­main calm dur­ing an emer­gency. Most ac­ci­dents oc­cur be­cause peo­ple get worked up and for­get all of there safe­ty train­ing.

Kier­ron Yip Ngow

Via e-mail


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