Trent Hills Mayor Bob Crate, Campbellford Fare Share Food Bank President Lillian Adams, 7 Hills Community Pantry secretary Doug Harpur, Hastings Roseneath Food Bank Chair Chris O’Dea, Enbridge Station Operations Manager Mike Ovsonka, Fire Chief Shawn Jamieson, and Fire Prevention Officer Brian Buchanan.
Gifted Through Safe Community Project Zero program
180 combination smoke and carbon monoxide alarms presented
Article/image by John Campbell
Campbellford - Tues., Jan. 31, 2023- Trent Hills Fire Department has received 180 combination smoke and carbon monoxide alarms from Enbridge Gas Inc.
The units are “very helpful” in preventing carbon monoxide, the “silent killer”, from claiming more victims, Mike Ovsonka, manager of Enbridge’s GTA East station operations, said at a presentation announcing the gift held Jan. 27 at the Trent Hills Emergency Services Base in Campbellford.
It’s the second time Enbridge has donated alarms to Trent Hills through Safe Community Project Zero, a public education campaign with the Fire Marshal’s Public Fire Safety Council that will provide more than 8,000 alarms to residents in 50 municipalities across Ontario this year.
“It’s a fantastic program … and our fire department is going the extra mile to make sure that they’re installed and working,” Mayor Bob Crate said. “It’s very sad when we hear of fires,” like the one that happened recently in Toronto where two adults and two children died.
“Smoke detectors would have prevented that,” he said.
“We had 133 fire-related deaths in the province of Ontario last year which is up significantly from the year before,” Fire Chief Shawn Jamieson said.
Jamieson said the fire department visited roughly 50 residences in 2022 that didn’t have working smoking alarms.
“You get an array of excuses,” he said, from forgetting to replace the battery after the alarm started “chirping” to not realizing how old the unit is. It’s a poor excuse because you’re putting your life and the lives of your family at risk, he said.
The fire department is partnering with local food banks to distribute the units for free. Clients can request one by filling out a form.
“We’re not handing them out, we will come and install them to make sure they’re installed properly,” Jamieson said. “The nice thing about [the alarms is that] they are 10-year maintenance-free.”
A news release given out at the presentation said carbon monoxide “is a toxic, odourless gas that is a by-product of incomplete combustion of many types of common fuels.”
In the same release, Ovsonka said “the best way to avoid carbon monoxide exposure is to eliminate it at the source by properly maintaining fuel-burning equipment … the alarms are a critical second line of defence to protect against carbon monoxide poisoning.”
Jamieson said sources of fuel not fully burned include gas stoves and fireplaces and wood stoves. Carbon monoxide exposure can also be caused by a car running in a garage or “a neighbour having a generator running outside your window in a power outage,” he added.
When the alarm goes off, leave your residence and call 9-1-1. “We’ll come and investigate where the problem is (and) we’ll make a recommendation,” Jamieson said, such as having the neighbour’s generator shifted “so it’s not blowing toward your window.”
He said smoke and CO alarms should be tested monthly and their batteries changed every six months.
Enbridge has invested $250,000 in Safe Community Project Zero, and over the past 14 years, the program has provided more than 76,000 alarms to Ontario fire departments.
Ovsonka said the alarms cost $50 to $80 to purchase retail.
“If anybody in the community needs a smoke alarm they can contact me, at 705-653-1900, ext. 291, to make arrangements to install them,” Fire Prevention Officer Brian Buchanan said.
