Fire Prevention Week is marked from Sunday, Oct. 6 to Sat, Oct. 12.
Fire chief and director of emergency services Steve McGean has been working out of Iqaluit for three years. He came into his current role a few months after the city's former fire chief vacated the position.
“Fire Prevention Week this year is homing in on smoke detectors and fire alarms. Very much stressing the point... [to] make the detectors work for you, but also very much stressing that you’re doing your semi-annual test on smoke detectors, so changing the batteries in fall and spring — that’s every six months to determine your detector is going to be working," he says. "We ask residents if they have any issues with smoke detectors to either reach out to your landlord or stop by and give us a call, we’ll come by and assist.”
McGean points out that the majority of fires in Iqaluit are experienced between midnight and 6 a.m. while most people are sleeping, which highlights the importance of having functioning smoke detectors.
“People are being woken up by these alarms, and that’s getting them to call in to the fire department to get us responding quickly," says McGean. "That’s why a lot of our recent fires, we’ve been able to get to them fast and put them out fast with minimal damage.”
Iqaluit usually experiences 30 to 80 active fires per year, with 300 to 400 response calls annually. McGean says a large portion of those response calls are from accidental cooking-related fires or smoke responses from oil or vats.
Another reoccurring lesson in fire safety surrounds indoor smoking. McGean reminds Nunavummiut to monitor the heat of charging cables which could cause issues, as well as smoking outside, as well as providing a proper butt can. “If we keep just using a coffee can in doorways, eventually that’s just going to catch fire, and that was the cause of a past fire here in Iqaluit. So keep the smoking outside, if you’re doing it inside your house, make sure you’re disposing of [butts] properly. Again, we just want our residents to be safe.”