With the sudden onset of cold weather, Clare’s chief fire officer, Adrian Kelly has called on people to ensure their smoke alarms are in good working order.
Speaking at the launch of National Fire Safety Week 2014, Mr Kelly issued a timely reminder that the risk of fire breaking out in the home significantly increases during winter.
The Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government is hosting the 13th annual all-island initiative through to next Monday, in association with the Northern Ireland Fire & Rescue Service and locally with Clare County Fire & Rescue Service.
Mr Kelly said that unclean chimney flues and unguarded open fires are amongst the most common causes of domestic fires in Clare each winter.
He noted that the theme of this year’s National Fire Safety Week campaign is “Let’s STOP fire together”.
He explained,”The ‘STOP’ in the campaign slogan captures the key behaviours that will help people stop fires starting and therefore reducing the number of casualties and deaths as a result of fire. S is for Smoke alarms, T is for Testing smoke alarms weekly, O is for Obvious dangers, P is for Plan your escape.”
In the event of a fire in your home Get Out, Stay Out And Call the Fire Brigade Out. The phone number to call out the Fire Service is 999/112.
To play your part during National Fire Safety Week, check out www.firesafetyweek.ie or the fire safety and prevention section of Clare County Council’s website, ww.clarecoco.ie.
A native of Ennis, Colin McGann has been editor of The Clare Champion since August 2020. Former editor of The Clare People, he is a journalism and communications graduate of Dublin Institute of Technology.