Calgarians reminded to check expiry date of their smoke alarms

The Calgary Fire Department kicked off Fire Prevention Week with four community open houses around the city Saturday.

The theme for this year is “Don’t Wait – Check the Date,” a reminder for Calgarians to check the expiry date of their smoke alarms to ensure their safety.

Fire officials say smoke alarms expire after 10 years.

“In 2015, one quarter of housefires in Calgary – which resulted in injury – occurred in homes without working smoke alarms,” Carol Henke, a Calgary Fire Department public information officer, said.

READ MORE: Calgary company fined after fire in home without smoke detectors

Even newer homes and communities can be at risk as their smoke alarms may be nearing the 10-year expiry date, according to the Calgary Fire Department.

The open houses were held at stations in McKenzie Towne, Symons Valley, Saddletowne and Signal Hill.

The McKenzie Towne Fire Station was packed with children eager to hop on a fire truck and tour the station.  It was also a good place for parents to learn about their aging smoke alarms.

“We learned that we have to change our fire alarms every ten years and ours are I think overdue now, so we should probably get onto changing them,” Dave Kowalczyk, who was there with his wife and three children, said.

It’s a shared responsibility between landlords and renters when it comes to having smoke alarms that aren’t past their best before date and have working batteries.

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“Anyone who owns property and rents it out, it’s their responsibility to ensure that there are working smoke alarms in that residence,” Henke said. “The tenants’ responsibility is to test them and to change the batteries once a year. So testing once a month and change the battery yearly. But the landlord needs to share that information with the tenant that those are the expectations.”

Both small landlords and big rental companies in Calgary have faced hefty bills for not providing smoke alarms.

Two years ago, four people suffered from smoke inhalation and one from minor burns after a fire at the Glenbrook Village townhouse complex on Oct. 30, 2014.

There were no working smoke detectors in their unit. An investigation found that there was another unit without working smoke alarms.

Last year, W.R.E Development (Calgary) Ltd. pleaded guilty under the Safety Codes Act and were fined $32,200.

“We still find a lot of homes that have the smoke alarms that for whatever reason, aren’t operational and we send that message out and we do fire inspections in public buildings, but we don’t get into the private residences often enough. So our message has to get out to them,” Tom Harnos, with the Alberta Office of the Fire Commissioner, said.

“It’s tough, because every year we have residential fires where we find out the batteries have been taken out because of nuisance alarms or the smoke alarm is 25- years-old and not working and it is your first line of defense,” Harnos said.

The 2014 Alberta building code requires all new homes to have smoke detectors in all bedrooms now, not just one on each floor. The alarms have to be interconnected so that if one goes off, they all do and they must have battery backup.

Open house visitors were also given tours by their local firefighters, who shared life-saving fire safety tips and invited children of all ages to climb aboard fire trucks and put themselves in the driver’s seat of their own adventure.

The Calgary Fire Department also launched its Smoke Alarm Selfie Contest on The City of Calgary Facebook page. The winning household will receive a visit from fire crews, who will test the home’s smoke alarms, help create a home escape plan and leave behind a swag bag.

Other events planned for Fire Prevention Week include the door-to-door Smoke Alarm Blitz to test and replace smoke alarms in Parkridge Estates on Oct. 12, and naming this year’s Junior Fire Chief on Oct. 13.

“Alberta’s Office of the Fire Commissioner recommends smoke alarms be replaced at least every 10 years, but because the public is generally unaware of this requirement, many homes have smoke alarms past their expiration date, putting people at increased risk,” Spence Sample, acting fire commissioner, said.

Fire Prevention Week was proclaimed in Canada in 1919 to commemorate the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, as well as a major fire that destroyed the Centre Block of the Parliament buildings in Ottawa on Feb. 3, 1916.

Fire Prevention Week is led by the National Fire Prevention Association (NFPA) and runs from Oct. 9 to 15.