The Cramahe Township Fire Department will receive an allotment of combination smoke and carbon monoxide alarms through a public safety initiative aimed at improving home safety and bringing fire and carbon monoxide-related deaths down to zero.
Safe Community Project Zero — an initiative involving Enbridge Gas and the Fire Marshal’s Public Fire Safety Council — is a public education campaign providing more than 16,600 alarms to residents in 70 municipalities across Ontario.
This year, the Cramahe department will receive 126 smoke/carbon monoxide alarms through the initiative. Cramahe Fire Chief Mark MacDonald said the alarms will be distributed to Cramahe Township homes in the near future.
“We want to ensure our residents are safe from carbon monoxide,” says MacDonald in a press release. “The alarms that we have received from the Safe Community Project Zero campaign will be distributed throughout our community, to ensure that our residents have early detection and notification. Although all of our residents won’t be able to receive an alarm during this campaign, we want to stress the importance of having a functioning CO alarm in your home.”
When properly installed and maintained, combination smoke and carbon monoxide alarms help provide the early warning to safely escape from a house fire or carbon monoxide exposure. Carbon monoxide is a toxic, odourless gas that is a by-product of incomplete combustion of many types of common fuels.
“Carbon monoxide is known as the ‘silent killer’ for a reason, and we have proof that prevention saves lives. We know that the best way to avoid carbon monoxide exposure is to eliminate it at the source by properly maintaining fuel-burning equipment, and that the alarms are a critical second line of defence to protect against carbon monoxide poisoning,” said Jean-Benoit Trahan, Enbridge Gas’s director of Eastern Region Operations and Gazifere Operations, in press release.
Jon Pegg, Ontario Fire Marshal and Chair of the Fire Marshal’s Public Fire Safety Council, said the objective of Safe Community Project Zero is to deliver combination smoke and carbon monoxide alarms to Ontario communities who need them the most.
“It’s a program that fire departments can adopt to help educate their communities about the requirement for all Ontario homes to have a CO alarm if they have a fuel-burning appliance or an attached garage,” said Pegg in a press release.
Enbridge Gas invested $500,000 in Safe Community Project Zero this year and, over the past 13 years, the program has provided more than 68,000 alarms to Ontario fire departments.