By Abigail Popple, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, RMG
Fire Prevention Week, observed in Canada each year but organized by the United States-based National Fire Protection Association, is coming up on October 6th-12th. To hear more about what this means for Valemount, The Goat sat down with Fire Department Chief Rick Lalonde.
“We always try to arrange a visit to the elementary school because that’s our most captive audience,” Lalonde joked. “Kids can look at our trucks and stuff, and we go to the school and deliver a little five-minute blurb on what the Fire Prevention Week slogan will be for the year.”
This year’s slogan is “Smoke Alarms: make them work for you,” a reminder to ensure that smoke alarms have fresh batteries and are in working condition.
“Once [smoke alarms] are ten years old, you need to change them. But sometimes they quit working after less time than that,” Lalonde said. “So if it’s beeping, you put a new battery in it, and then if it continues to beep, it’s junk. Throw it out.”
“It’s a lifesaver,” he added. “So many people die every year because they don’t have a smoke alarm.”
Lalonde also discussed the inter-agency training that the Valemount Fire Department does with other groups, like the BC Wildfire Service (BCWS), to ensure a coordinated response during wildfires. This training was crucial during the Cedarside wildfire in August, which was quickly brought under control after a response from BCWS alongside the Valemount Fire Department.
Much of this training focuses on communication during incident responses, Lalonde said. The BCWS Structure Protection Units coordinate training with local fire departments so they know how to communicate with the Service during wildfires, he said.
“The premise is to make sure everybody has a bunch of education so that everybody is on the same page when there’s an incident,” Lalonde said.
The training also allows BCWS to keep track of which local firefighters have had specific types of training, so they know who to delegate tasks to, Lalonde added.
“They’ll know who we are, what education we’ve had and what we can do to help them,” he said. “There’s a lot of communication based around interagency education, and that’s a positive thing.”
