Fire Prevention
Fire prevention is something that the government and fire departments help home owners learn. Many things can go into making your home preventative from any type of fires.
The government places laws and regulations for home owners almost every year. These laws are also called “Fire Codes.” If your property (home or business) does not apply to these codes, you could be fined until they are fixed, evicted until the place is livable and safe, or your business could be shut down. Being from a small town like I am, there are many businesses and houses that are still way out of date and need to be fixed. Sadly, people do not think it is a huge deal and just shrug us off when told things need to be brought up to code.
With my town being small and an older farm town, the buildings and houses are of course built with older material and older wiring, and wiring is one of the biggest causes of house and building fires today. With old wiring comes weak wire which in turn can cause sparks to fly. Whenever sparks fly, they could catch anything on fire that they are around. This is why it is very important to keep your house up to code, so things like this doesn’t happen.
Every October fire departments hold Fire Prevention Week for school age kids. At my department, the kids come to the fire house from kindergarten all the way through high school. When they are there, we teach them fire prevention and show them around our trucks and around the house. This is a great time for the kids and us as we get to teach the kids to be safe in their own homes and help mom and dad keep the house safe. Along with the fire fighters there teaching, for the younger kids we have Sparky the fire dog there for the kids to see. We use Sparky as a memory tool for the kids, whenever they think “dog” they think of fire safety.
