Family safely escapes house fire

NEWS RELEASE - Distributed June 5, 2020 8:02 AM

Summary

City Fire Rescue crews responded to a house fire that was located in the basement suite on the afternoon of June 2, 2020 at Kamp Place. The occupant was not home at the time of the fire and fortunately the family upstairs had working smoke alarms and safely escaped the residence.

The basement suite, where the fire started, had no working smoke alarms.

The upstairs tenants, a family of seven, were alerted to the fire due to the smoke and were able to evacuate and return to their suite afterwards. The basement occupant was not as fortunate as the basement suite suffered significant damage.

The cause of the fire is accidental in nature. To learn more about the importance of installing working smoke alarms, watch the video attached to the online version of this news release or visit: https://youtu.be/ry9UKZx6dWY.

Link to Strategic Plan: Educating the public on the importance of fire prevention and working smoke alarms contributes to a safe, livable community.

Key Points

A working smoke alarm would have alerted tenants sooner and may have prevented the amount of damage that occurred.
Lithium Polymer batteries are very powerful and require heightened awareness of their potential for fire due to improper charging, discharging, or cell damage. Anyone of these 3 issues can cause the battery to become a fire hazard.
Additional safety meassures may be necessary when charging these types of batteries such as the use of a LiPro bag or metal box to contain the batteries.

Quotes

"Electrical fires are one of the top three causes of fire. This fire was preventable and the damage and extensive loss of the occupant’s possessions could have been minimized had the working smoke alarms been connected. Smoke alarms save lives and property."

Alan Millbank

Fire Prevention Officer

Nanaimo Fire Rescue

Videos

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Contact:

Alan Millbank

Fire Prevention Officer

Nanaimo Fire Rescue

250-755-4562

Print News Release

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