Editorial: Thank you to our Fire Department

An SUV collides with a deer on a highway outside Morinville. Within minutes they are there to get the collision victims out of the wrecked vehicles so the paramedics can get them en route to the hospital. A condominium erupts in flames and shifts to a neighbouring garage. Within minutes they arrive to battle the blaze and to protect neighbouring homes from destruction. A meatloaf catches fire in the oven, setting off the alarms. Within minutes they are there to douse the burned dinner and to reassure a shaken homeowner in the late afternoon.

They are the members of the Morinville Fire Department. They, together with their counterparts in Sturgeon County and Legal, give their time and their compassion to, as has been said before, rush in as others are rushing out.

Local firefighters will spend time in schools and the community this week offering their time during Fire Prevention Week, an annual awareness week that lets them remind us of what we need to do to prevent seeing them in full gear.

This year’s Fire Prevention Week theme is Look. Listen. Learn. Be Aware. Fire Can Happen Anywhere.

In short, this year’s campaign works to educate people about three basic but essential steps to take to reduce the likelihood of having a fire––and how to escape safely in the event of one.

firepreventionweek.org offers the following advice:

LOOK
Look for places fire could start. Take a good look around your home. Identify potential fire hazards and take care of them.

LISTEN
Listen for the sound of the smoke alarm. You could have only minutes to escape safely once the smoke alarm sounds. Go to your outside meeting place, which should be a safe distance from the home and where everyone should know to meet.

LEARN
Learn two ways out of every room and make sure all doors and windows leading outside open easily and are free of clutter.

Fire Prevention Week is an opportunity for us all to learn a bit about fire prevention, change the batteries in those smoke detectors, and to thank our firefighters for their commitment and volunteerism to saving lives and property.

If there are but two words they can take away from this brief editorial, they are Thank You.

– SD

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