Doug from Public Education-Fire
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Natalie:This podcast is recorded in Treaty 1 territory, the home and traditional lands of the Anishinaabe, Enu, and Dakota peoples, and the national homeland of the Red River Metis. We acknowledge that our drinking water comes from Shoal Lake 40 First Nation in Treaty 3 territory.
Tamara:Hey, I'm Tamara. And I'm Natalie.
Tamara:Natalie, it's October if you can believe it. In just a few days, it's gonna be fire prevention week too. And we're joined today by Doug Sinclair. He's a public education coordinator with the city's fire paramedic service. And Doug really tells us that the kids get it right.
Tamara:You know, they practice those fire drills at school and they know what to do when that alarm goes off. Doug says that adults sometimes don't, and that's that's a little scary.
Natalie:Yeah. No. A little bit of humility, taking one from the kids. Also in this episode, he tells us about, why you might hear a knock at the door. You know, later this month, maybe it's trick or treaters, but at other times of the year, it could be a firefighter.
Natalie:Let's chat. So, Doug, before we talk about your current role, I I do wanna step back a little bit. Twenty seven years you've been a firefighter. And it's really important for people to understand, you know, in those early days as a first responder, what did it teach you about the risks of a fire in a home?
Doug:The number one thing would be how quickly fire spreads and how the conditions change. And had a couple of incidents myself just at calls, That I was on. One was a, I could think of it was a basement fire. Basements are really tough fires because they get really hot. You have to go down through a layer of heat when you're going down into the basement.
Doug:And then there's just nowhere for it to go. Even windows in basements for the most part, like you don't have that venting effect of, you know, the fire leaving and there was no windows, no place for it to vent. So it's filled up the room really quick. And then what I noticed about that particular fire was it started getting really bright at the ceiling and it looked like a quilt, just like a quilt of fire. And I was like, I've never seen that.
Doug:And I knew that I knew we were in a pretty dangerous place at that point where you're like, okay, this could flash over anytime. Looks harmless, it was like this really soft, kind of like a light glowing fire. And that means it was just getting more and more toxic and more gaseous and hotter. And then, so I got I kinda got lost in the closet. I tried to I tried to walk out, and I was underneath a stair the stairway the stairway going down and walked through the closet.
Doug:My partner who knew the wall where it was basically pulled me out. And we just kind of had a bit of a rule going into this fire. Know where the wall is because it was really hot and very dark. And by that time we had crews down in the basement as well. But we like being down there, it was probably just a few minutes, but it felt like a long time.
Doug:Like, you know, you lose your concept of time. So that one was when I thought, wow, like this changed quickly, but we just had the kind of presence of mind to go, okay, like maybe it's time to get out now. Right? There's a lot going on down here and their crews had come in. We eventually extinguished the fire.
Natalie:Wow. And things change just so fast.
Doug:Yeah. Changes very quickly. And just to see it firsthand how that happens, temperature is really hot. Like, you're we're talking like, you know, you're you're looking into like the six, seven hundred degrees because I could see the the conditions on the ceiling level, like pillowing where it was like kinda like the fire changed. Like, a fire starts, there's a fire in the area, and then it'll get really smoky, and that smoke fills a room really quickly.
Doug:Right? And then and then it goes basically when it it always rises, but then it has nowhere to go. It'll always go down. And the thicker and the blacker that smoke is, the more toxic it is. So this was real toxic.
Doug:And just another one other incident was a fire we had on William, a vacant house, and it was really large, like a three story, like a really large home. And it an empty home. It was for sale. And something started at the back of the home. I just remember being in a room and the same thing there where it was like, it was clear.
Doug:There was a little bit of light gray smoke throughout the home. It started in the back Main Floor. We were on the Second Floor at the front. We were basically opposite side of the home. Then, the conditions, I just felt it getting hotter and I could see the windows getting a little darker.
Doug:Conditions changed really quickly. For me, a, you know, when you see it firsthand and we're out there educating the public, you tell people like, hey, you don't have time to get your belongings and your run around and, you know, do this and do that. It's like, it's time to get out. And that's why smoke alarms are there, For that purpose.
Tamara:So you've gone from being caught in fires to now helping prevent fires. In your role in public education, what does that look like? What are you doing exactly?
Doug:Yeah, the prevention piece is huge. It's really about prevention, but the reality is like, you know, fire doesn't discriminate and it happens and happens really quickly. And I gave a couple of stories. Like it's not like that happens all the time. We have extensive training and we have good leadership and Winnipeg here, have a really experienced workforce with fires.
Doug:And it's an experience based thing. You could talk about it, read about it all you want. But the reality is when you go into it, like every time you step into a building, you don't know what's going to happen. So you just have to stick to the script like you're training. Right?
Doug:And now, so people don't have that training. And so when you understand the dangers that we have equipment, we have experience in training with it all, but people who don't have that, you have to have a plan. That's, it's very important because it happens so quickly and condition could change. When it gets really black and dark, that means it's really toxic as I mentioned. And we kinda like, you don't wanna put a scare into people.
Doug:We always tell them you kinda in those conditions, you kinda have one breath. You take it, you have to hold that and you gotta get out. When conditions are a little less, like a little bit lighter smoke, smokes at the ceiling level, that's when it's time to make a decision. I got to get out now underneath that. It's really scary, we've had kids do it.
Doug:We've had children actually do that, like real live, where they read the conditions, they got out under the smoke, which is terrifying to have that. So again, we're trying to get into the preventative piece where if you have a plan number one, like maybe things like candles, not burning candles, not leaving cooking unattended, not having your lint in your dryer, to clean out your lint traps, like all these preventive things, extension cords, chargers. You know, now we have like batteries, right? These lithium batteries, like things like that. We tried our best to get the messaging to prevent fires with all those types of things.
Doug:There's so many different causes of it. Kitchen fires are still like very high, like in terms of, you know, in a residential fire, whether it be apartment, condo, house, 70% of fires are starting kitchens. So we can That's preventative to me. But if there's something that happens in your sleeping, not even if you're sleeping and you don't know what's in another room, smoke alarm is the key piece. And I think we just kind of all take the smoke alarm for granted.
Doug:We test it. We probably walk by it a 100 times a day with just not even realizing that if something's happening with smoke that it's gonna be a life saving piece. So we really focus on the prevention and then the smoke alarm itself, which is the piece that's going to warn you. And then the escape plan. But you have a plan if your smoke alarm goes off and there's smoke.
Doug:What do we do? And more you practice it, the better it is.
Tamara:And you're doing some interesting work going door to door, just making sure after a fire that people in the neighborhood do have those smoke alarms and they do work. Do want to explain a little bit more about this?
Doug:Yeah, I love that question because it's such a good program. We just kind of launched this and this is something that happens out east in Ontario and a lot of the Eastern US. They have an after the fire program where there's a fire anywhere in the community, the departments are usually going out with a team and they're knocking on doors and just asking people, are you aware that there was a fire in your community? And if there is, we have the discussion. Okay, like, do you have a plan?
Doug:We can't really talk about the cause because a lot of times we don't know. It's under investigation. We try to get there when it's fairly fresh. But there's a way that we have to navigate through that as well. But when we do go door to door, we're just having a real good conversation, an intensive conversation with homeowners.
Doug:And they kind of steer that conversation. Sometimes people just see you and like, yeah, kinda I know. And I don't know, a lot of times people won't have a more extensive conversation about it. Especially I find with people who are right around the home, like neighboring homes, like the home next door behind it. And they see things happening.
Doug:Like if they actually look out their front window and there's like, all these firefighters trying to put out a fire. It's like, wow, like this is really close to home. So we have these conversations with people in the community. We knock on the door, ask them to have a fire. If they know about the fire, everyone usually is like, yes.
Doug:It's not something that's very subtle. And then we talk about like, well, do a you plan in effect? Do you have a plan in place if something ever happened at your place or your house caught on fire? Like even extension of a fire, right? If your houses are close together, there's a house on fire and a neighboring home, we've had that, it could catch on fire.
Doug:We might not even know what's going to happen. So we have those conversations. We talked about the escape plan. We talked about the smoke alarm and we get all kinds of different people obviously in the community from elderly people to young people. There's all kinds of different every cross section you can think of.
Natalie:And I can imagine there's maybe some some psychology there. You know, we we started this discussion talking about many people are surprised at how quickly these things can change and that that maybe talking to folks right after a fire has happened in the neighborhood, they might be more open to having that discussion.
Doug:Oh, big time. There's so many specific examples. I don't go out in the community as much as the team we have out there, but I join them on occasion. You're like, when you talk to some people that have seen it or even We even talked to one homeowner in the community once and she saw us walking through the neighborhood and she came out and it was her family home. Was something that happened behind the home.
Doug:It was actually a garage and she was traumatized from the event. And we spent a lot of time with her at that event talking and what we could do to prevent it and etcetera, etcetera. And she was just talking about how it affected her, like on a personal level. Like I lost this, I lost that. It could have been worse, but I'm traumatized.
Doug:Like it almost, it makes you hyper aware of, like now all these little hazards in your home and smoke alarms. And we've talked to several people. I remember there was another home he went to in a community in Winnipeg where like the woman had like five or six smoke alarms after seeing two or three fires in her community and not even know what to do. Like she, like, you know, she can smell the smoke coming through her into the home, even though it was a block or two away because it was a rather large fire and like kind of watching her front window, like, what do I do? Do I leave?
Doug:Do I stay? You know, just a small bungalow with, six or seven smoke alarms on one floor. So it does create an awareness big time. One other story you could think of was another community we went to that the neighbor called in the fire, family didn't know the house was on fire. The neighbors were like, yeah, like their own home, they were in the home not knowing it was on fire.
Doug:Like a dinner time. And they were looking out the window having dinner and they're like, their neighbor's house is on fire. And she said, it was like the most traumatic thing she's ever experienced. And she did the ones who called 911 and our crews responded rather quickly. She was really impressed with the response time and she couldn't believe how it was terrifying it was.
Doug:And she talked about how traumatic it was for her, just being the neighbor, seeing that and then calling and all a sudden all these crews show up and now they're getting people out of the house. So, yeah, it does have a big time effect.
Tamara:So what's it like for you to go and door knock and talk to people and realize suddenly that they don't have a smoke alarm, that their smoke alarm is not working or they haven't even thought about it.
Doug:Yeah, we get Well, obviously we want to provide something from right away. The most part, people are really compliant with that. They're like, yeah, I need a smoke alarm. And a lot of times it depends on where you're going and what every home has got a different situation. But when we see someone who doesn't, you realize how fragile that is almost where it's like, hey, you don't have any protection.
Doug:And you're sleeping in the middle of the night and there's smoke conditions or a fire, you're not going to hear anything. Like how are you going actually get out of your home? So makes us a little more, I'm trying to think of the right word, but a little more sensitive to like, hey, you need protection like immediately. And we do have a program for that as well.
Tamara:So you're a homeowner, how many smoke alarms should you have and where should you have them?
Doug:Good question. We have one, we should have one, it's recommended. We have one on every level of your home. So if you have a bungalow that has a basement, we recommend two alarms minimum. So minimum one on every level, you know, three story or two story home with a basement, three alarms.
Doug:So people are a little more diligent with the alarms. We'll have a couple on the Main Floor and we want them outside a sleeping area up high where you can hear them. So that's another important piece where you know, because smoke rises and we want that, if it's in the initial phase of the fire, it's a light smoke, it's going to rise quickly and that's going set the alarm off right away. We want it up near the ceiling, not too close to the top, but I'd say about a foot. And then we want them outside the sleeping area.
Doug:Even if you sleep with your doors closed, can you hear the alarm? And can people in the home hear the alarm? So it's important we have them outside the sleeping area.
Natalie:You know, another thing I really want to point out for folks with this After the Fire program is that it has taken you all over the city. It hasn't necessarily been one neighborhood. I wanna kind of spread out that awareness a little bit. What surprises you when you knock on doors in newer neighborhoods?
Doug:That's a great question too. Again, we talked about it doesn't discriminate. It happens everywhere. Like people are in their kitchen. So we've had fires in all quadrants, all areas of the city.
Doug:It's not just one area and the causes are always different. It's always something, someone had a pillow on their charger and Oh my God, I can't believe that happened. Or someone left some cooking unattended. So what surprised me a lot of times is maybe what we take for granted in terms of the alarm itself. Like, you know, you haven't checked the batteries, you know, like we went through a new build area, a newer build.
Doug:It was about 02/2006, 2008 build in Winnipeg. And the homes were in great shape. They all looked, they're larger homes, they're really nice homes. And I think all the residents we talked to were really comfortable with the fact, Hey, this is newer build and my alarms should be working, no problem. But they're all outdated because the alarm itself only lasts ten years.
Doug:We recommend you change those under ten years. And so every homeowner there had the original alarm from the original build. So, you know, that was like 16 to 18 So we're
Tamara:talking entire neighborhoods.
Doug:Entire neighborhoods. And it was amazing the response we got because right away those homeowners like, I'm going out like tonight, I'm going to buy a new alarm, going replace my alarm. But a lot of those alarms came with the build.
Tamara:For people who can't quickly run to the store and grab a smoke alarm, what can they do? Can you help them in that scenario?
Doug:Absolutely. We a program called the Safe Family Program and we could provide a smoke alarm for people who can't get out or maybe it's a factor, maybe it's a cost factor, whatever the case may be, or they just can't even physically get out to a store. They don't have any resources. We install the alarm like right on the spot. There's a waiver.
Doug:I just wanna make sure people understand that piece. There is a waiver that they do sign just that, you know, we're providing the alarm. Here it is. It's a piece that we have to kind of go through in terms to provide the alarm, but it's rather simple step in the process, but we do provide the alarm. We can install it right then and there.
Doug:Or if they want to make an appointment, we can do that too. And then if, you know, at a certain time of the year, it might be a fire crew that comes out and does it. But a lot of times we've been installing these arms right on the spot with a little simple signing of a waiver and that we provided a smoke alarm or two.
Natalie:Now one of the interesting things about your work is that success often looks like nothing. Nothing's happened, right? Because that's what you were hoping to achieve. That's gotta be a really strange thing to measure.
Doug:Yeah. I don't know. Statistics, right? A lot of things are based on stats. I know that we know how many fires we do have.
Doug:There's a growing population in Winnipeg and there's just more things happening out there. There's more chargers. There's just all kinds of different things that probably can start a fire. And so what do we It's hard to measure for, you know, to answer your question. It's hard to measure for what the impact actually is, but we, you know, so I guess you can look at it and say, well, the fires have gone down, but then with the growing population and maybe even an aging population, You know, I don't know if it's even keeled, if that makes any sense.
Doug:If it's I don't know. It's a really tough question.
Natalie:And yet, you know, you do have these rare occasions maybe where someone does connect with you and tells you the good news story because of something you've been able to share with them.
Doug:Yeah. It was one specific story is when we were doing we just started the after the fire community walk throughs. It was like new and we were in the West End and there was a significant fire on Corner Of a street in the West End. And we went in and all the neighbors knew about this fire. It was a real large fire in a rather large building and it was an apartment.
Doug:So everyone in community kind of knew about this fire and it happened in the early evening. So it was like kind of prime time, right? It was like 05:00 and a lot of people were coming home, a lot of people had seen the fire. There was like, you know, kind of walking on fire escapes. And so that was one of the first communities that we had kind of hit with the after fire program.
Doug:Actually, chief Christian Schmidt was with us that day. So we knocked on the door and there was a homeowner and it was two or three sisters living in this home. And so I think the home was kind of one of those generational homes, nice home, bigger home. And we just asked about smoke alarms. Do have working smoke alarms?
Doug:Do you test them? And they were like, yes, we do. We had this great conversation and just kind of left it at that and just kept going door to door. That was like, I think, believe on a Monday or Tuesday. And on a Saturday I was actually at Polo Park walking through the mall and I wasn't in uniform and this girl had knocked on her door, she recognized me in a store.
Doug:And she came up to me and said, Hey, did you just knock on my door this week? And I was like, Yes, we did. I totally remember her because she had pink hair. We just had this great conversation. Like, actually, we checked our alarms and we didn't actually have smoke alarms on all floors.
Doug:We only had it on one floor. And that to me, that was a good indicator of, you know, like they knew there was a fire. You're assuming that people are going to automatically check that. Hey, we should check our smoke alarms. There's a fire here.
Doug:And it's like, we should have safety measures. Like what we do if our place is on fire. I think the conversation happens, but I don't know if people take action on it. And so I don't I think they just assumed that they had these smoke alarms. And she said, when we actually did check after you left, we went out and bought some right away and put them on all fours.
Doug:And that made me really happy. I was like, okay, that's awesome. But again, just people kind of automatically assume they have all the mechanisms in place and you have to test the alarms as well. We want you to test them every monthly, if you can, it's just a habit. It's a good habit to get a test of monthly.
Doug:If they require batteries, change those batteries once a year, like make a date in your calendar, come up with a landmark date, whether it be January 1 or something like that, and change the batteries every year. You can get alarms nowadays that don't require batteries. Like you don't have to change them. They're lithium batteries are built in. Even combo alarms with smoke alarm slash COCO alarms, carbon monoxide alarms, you can get those as well.
Doug:Those are kind of like the higher end model of what a smoke alarm is, but they're definitely worth it at the end of the day.
Natalie:Now, campaign where you really were able to track numbers is a celebration that's actually coming up later this month in October. Many in our our Hindu and Sikh communities celebrate Diwali. It's a celebration of light. There are fireworks involved. Tell us more about that and and what you got up to.
Doug:Yeah. It was a really good initiative. We went out to the community and we talked to a lot of people in the Sikh and Hindu communities and they were excellent to talk to and just understanding the holiday and the celebration of light. Like you say, how there's fireworks involved with it. So we went around and just basically into the community and talked to as many people in that particular community as possible, just to kind of see where they're at with fireworks and permits and things like that.
Doug:Because you do need a permit in the city of Winnipeg to light off fireworks. And so, you know, are people obtaining fireworks? What are the safety mechanisms that they have? And just kind of like spreading the word to their community. And so, like, we learned a lot about the Sikh and Hindu community.
Doug:We went out with a team of people, just had some great conversations, a lot of the Sikh and Hindu temples and met some of the great leadership in those temples. They really spread the word to their community. And we really reduced the number of calls in relation to fireworks during that time of the year.
Natalie:Brilliant.
Tamara:Has fire safety changed over the past couple of years? Are the risks any different, more severe now? I mean, in your experience, you've seen a lot.
Doug:Yeah. Like it has. It's a good question because there's the actual I don't like to use the word traditional, but things like cooking and things like that. Those are things that are always gonna be around like, you know, stoves, there's elements, right? There's people are cooking and they have a maybe a dish cloth or what depends on what they're cooking with it.
Doug:If you're cooking with grease on a frying pan, things like that. And it's amazing when you start going out to the community and talking to people. Like we'll go into schools a lot and we do presentations for classrooms in schools. And we'll always have like a teacher or someone come up and say, oh my God, I'm glad you're here. Like we had I don't I'm so embarrassed by having fire in my kitchen and, you know, you'd to call the fire department, I couldn't believe it.
Doug:Next thing you like I'm using a fire extinguisher. So it's amazing the amount of people who have them. But to answer the question, I just think I would say yes, for sure because other things now are responsible for fires like things like batteries, lithium batteries in particular, cell phone batteries, chargers.
Tamara:Those fires are particularly nasty. Understand.
Doug:Yeah. It depends on, like, it's something that we're learning a lot about because, know, there's different stories about batteries and different types of batteries. Like there's EV batteries for, you know, bikes and those scooters and hoverboards, things like that. There's bigger batteries for cars now, electric cars. But for us, a lot of it has to do as well with the amount of cell phones and pads and tablets and computers and laptops.
Doug:Like everyone's got, not everyone, but a lot of people have multiple phones and tablets and things like that in their homes. So just think about your own home, how many times you're plugging in a device, how many devices you're plugging in. And so those things now, you know, it's like things like matching chargers and things like that. Are they heated? Are they uncovered?
Doug:Are you overloading an outlet? Are you overloading a power bar? Those kinds of things are becoming more prominent, electrical fires.
Tamara:Is there a difference in terms of the ability for a smoke alarm to detect smoke? Or if you can only afford, you know, the one that fits in your price point, is that still going to do the job as good as one that maybe is twice or three times the price?
Doug:100%. Yeah. A 100%. And the smoke you can get a very basic smoke alarm and that, again, the function of that alarm is just to quickly detect the smoke and then it'll And that's why the testing piece is really important. Right?
Doug:Just make sure it's working. Yeah. 's different price points for them all. I was just kinda going to the one extreme to the next. I know someone personally who we had this conversation and they know me and they're like, oh, I should go buy new and, you know, she checked her alarms and everything.
Doug:And then actually thought that they were inadequate and went bought the like the ones that have the reading and with parts per million with a CO and their combo alarm with lithium battery, probably the most expensive alarm you can get. But that for her living on her own that she said she thought that was worth There's
Tamara:some peace of mind
Doug:to
Tamara:put But on that basic model will still save
Doug:your Basic model will save your life.
Tamara:Carbon monoxide is another alarm that you should really have in your home.
Doug:Yeah, absolutely. So carbon monoxide, it's the same principle applies with the carbon monoxide alarm in terms of testing it. We want them we want you to test that alarm once a month and you want to change the batteries every year. So those same principles apply and the units are only good for about ten years. The only difference is if you have a separate carbon monoxide alarm, then you want to put it lower.
Doug:You don't have to have it as high. With a carbon monoxide alarm, if it's a plug in alarm, for example, you can just plug it in and out that lower. And sometimes they have a reading on them that it shows a parts per million on there. It's not necessary to have those. You can afford to get one of those, they're great to have.
Doug:But the alarm itself, they look like a smoke alarm a lot of times as well. And the alarm goes off. It's a different, there's a different chirping sequence. Like if it's three chirps, it'll be, you know, a fire alarm, right? Smoke alarm.
Doug:If it's four chirps, it's carbon monoxide. That's how you can kind of tell from, like if you can't actually see it and you're in your bedroom and it's like a chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, that's your carbon monoxide alarm. So it's like a three to four, smoke is three, carbon monoxide being four chirps. And as well, you want to make sure that you're just testing it and changing all the time as well, Because you can't see carbon monoxide, you can't smell it, you can't taste it. So it's it's actually a colorless or less gas, and it's poisonous.
Natalie:You know, to to just kind of swing back to education, anyone listening who who has a kid might recognize another one of your education programs. And maybe I'll I'll share. The way I learned about it is my daughter came home from daycare and said, mom, I jumped out a window. And I'm talking about the the fire safety house. Can can you tell
Doug:us a little more? Yes, it's a great program. We have two trailers in the city of Winnipeg. They're actually like portable homes or mobile homes and they're called fire safety houses. And actually it's a free resource to be able to book this.
Doug:And we go to a lot of community events, schools, things like that. That program runs from May until the end, but both the August. And it's run by, we have seven interns, what we call interns, which are educational assistants within the city of Winnipeg. And they just kind of roll up to a community event or a school and we have, you know, whatever participants come through the house and there's a studio at the front of it, which is, it's got like a mock kitchen, a little fireplace in there. We talk about the hazards, like things in a kitchen.
Doug:We have different ways of teaching the message based on the age groups. So we teach kids as young as your daughter at three and preschool and things like that. And we could go right up to adults with it. But that's that program, what's great about it, it's mobile. We come to you with the trailer.
Doug:As long as you have a parking spot and we can work it out, you have a community group, could be for a community event, a picnic, whatever. And it has the studio, which we do about maybe about twelve or fifteen minute presentation. I'm talking about, like the smoke alarm, the things we're talking about now, smoke alarms, escape plans, the hazards in the kitchen of the home, how to spot the hazards. We talk about that. And then we move to the back part, which is like a mock bedroom.
Doug:That's where your daughter jumped out the window. It's actually, we have a smoke, like a smoke machine that actually has artificial smoke in there. And so we will run the artificial smoke, it'll stay at the ceiling. We can vent it out the ceiling. It's not harmful, but it's at the ceiling and actually kids get to see what it's like when smoke is at the ceiling.
Doug:Smoke alarm goes off. We have a fake heated door. So we'll have to, the kids will have to point out, you know, where are the two ways out in this room and one's through the door, one's through the window. Well, we want people to feel the door on the way out. So a lot of times they'll feel the door at the back of their hand.
Doug:Does that door feel warm? Yes, it does. Are you gonna go out that door? No. Where would you go next?
Doug:We wanna go out the window. And and we'll get them to practice, basically practically going out the window in a practical sense and getting to a meeting place.
Natalie:It's it's it's so cool. It's it's similar to what you were saying about your own education as a as a firefighter. It nothing compares to real experience and tangible experience. You don't want someone to to lose everything, and you don't want them to have the worst experience. So this is just such a cool alternative.
Doug:It is. And there's so many pieces to it too. And like, you know, we talk, like we do a lot of, we're doing a lot of studying with case studies. We were like kind of looking into things that happen with, like we watch videos, like our interns in that program, they get training with a lot of videos they watch with there's one video in particular I remember where they put a series of cameras in people's homes, in children's bedrooms basically, and did a mock fire drill, I'd say like 12:00 or 01:00 in the morning. Some kids weren't even getting out of bed when they heard that when the smoke alarm was going off.
Doug:And so then, they ran some fake smoke into the home and it was like a total surprise. What happens when your smoke alarm goes off? And some kids were putting the blankets over their heads and rolling over going back to bed. By the third time they did it, they were like literally rolling out of bed, immediately getting to the floor, crawling to the door, checking the door with their head, okay, can't get out the door, I access my window? So the practice makes perfect or makes sense.
Doug:The practice makes sense kind of thing where the more you practice it, it's going be second nature. If you don't practice the first time there's smoke in your home, it could go bad, especially with visibility, things like that. Even though it's your own home and you think you know your way out, every step of the way, the minute smoke conditions come in, it just changes everything. It changes especially your visual perception. If it's hot or it's smoky, it's a little bit scary.
Doug:Right? So we want people to be able to react to the alarm. And in schools we do 10 fire drills a year. And we observe fire drills in schools and like we can go to schools with 500 kids and that fire drills, they're all out in a minute and a half. It's probably one of the safest places to be in a school.
Tamara:What about adults? Do you find that they are also as obedient? Not
Doug:even close. And it's not to pick on any cross section. We talk about this all the time. We do presentations, our pub ed team goes out and does all kinds of different presentations in the community. We go to seniors residences, we go to newcomer groups, we go to schools, we go to everything we can go to, that we can attend.
Doug:And we always talk about adults, like how children We want you to be like a school. When your smoke alarm is going off in your apartment, for example, you live in a five story apartment and you're not going out because it's like the fifth time there's been a false alarm with cooking, for example. Oh, it's probably someone cooking again and you're not leaving your building. To me that's really scary. Because you actually really don't know what's going on around you.
Doug:Is it above me? Is it below me? Where is it? And there's times our fire crews are showing up on a scene. We're at an apartment and there's like three people standing outside and we're going like, this is not good.
Doug:I was actually when I was in operations, when I was a frontlines firefighter, we went to a hotel one day and there was like five people standing out and they had every room sold. And they actually had smoke in their kitchen, in the basement of this hotel. And the alarm was going off and it was like a false it wasn't a false alarm, but it was something they got under control and no one was outside. And it wasn't a multi story building. It was only a two story smaller hotel.
Doug:But, you know, like we were just like, wow, like where are all the people? They're all in their rooms.
Tamara:So now you guys are doing double duty because you have to probably go and try to evacuate everybody and put out a fire.
Doug:Yeah. Especially if there's a fire, right? And the thing is that that's just more daunting for our crews. Firefighters are trained to search the building. There's a search team that always goes in there, but that's just like, you know, with limited resources when you have a hotel with 300 people in it, 400 people, and you have several crews, they're trying to, obviously they're trying to locate the fire, knock the fire down, get it under control.
Doug:But there's also a team searching for people. There's a process that everyone's got a specific duty. But, you know, again, that's a lot of people in a lot of rooms. And so, you say, the evacuation and I think sometimes some of those buildings do have an all call type, maybe a speaker system. I don't know if they, I've never actually seen it, if they actually get on there, are they going to announce there's a fire?
Doug:Like, I'm not sure.
Tamara:This is not a drill, get
Doug:out But with that even being said, I couldn't imagine a place like a hotel when someone comes over a monitor and says, this is not a drill, it's a real fire. I couldn't imagine the panic that would ensue there. So it's tough for places like hotels because they have to rely on the people themselves to be able to get out. Because people are coming and going all the time. Apartments are a little different, condos, things like that, that are multi residents, places, and there's multiple tenants, things like that.
Doug:It's just, to me, it's scary the fact that people aren't getting out. And, know, especially if I'm on the Seventh Floor or Sixth Floor of the building and you're able to do so. If you're able to take the stairwell down, do it. You can't use the elevator when that alarm system is activated. It's for firefighters that elevator system will not work.
Doug:You can't take an elevator when the alarm system is going off. And so I recommended to get on an elevator and people with mobility issues, things like that, there has to be that plan in place. So that's where residents need to work with their, you know, management companies, things like that. You know, do you have, is there something that you're in need of with getting, be able to get out of your residence what to do in case of that.
Natalie:Can I clarify one thing? Are there some buildings where you are supposed to barricade inside your unit?
Doug:There are, yeah. So they'll have those rules in place. So I think what's really important is that they have, like you're talking to the management team, you know, if you have like, I don't know, I'll use a condominium as an example. My mom lives in a 55 plus condo. Right?
Doug:Do you guys like I always ask her, do you guys have like, when you have your meetings, are you actually talking about what happens if the alarm system's activated? What imagine you have a
Natalie:lot to ask your mom about her fire safety.
Tamara:Have you joined one of the meetings and given presentations?
Doug:No, but we've done a lot. A lot of those and some are better than others because that is again, like we offer the resource. We try to get out as best we can. Some people don't even know, oh, I didn't know we could do a presentation. Like you can come in and talk to our group and again, no cost.
Doug:So it's a great question because like we try to be We want to see as many people as possible, like in your apartment block or your condo, if you're having a meeting, yeah, we can come and talk about what to do if their alarm system is going off and what's the plan.
Tamara:All right, Doug, I've got my running list of things I And need to check when I get I'm sure so do our listeners. What are some of the
Natalie:things that people should be
Tamara:doing at home, should be checking all those sorts of things?
Doug:Yeah. The first thing is the smoke alarm as we talked about. Make sure they're up high outside the sleeping area, recommended one on every floor. If you get more, that's fine. And, you know, again, have them up high on the ceiling outside where you can sleep and test those alarms once a month.
Doug:Again, change the batteries once a year if they require changing. And the unit itself is only good for ten years. So that's something that we'll continue to press on with the messaging. So that piece is very vital. When the alarm goes off, what's your plan?
Doug:Could you have access out of two Do you have two ways out of every room, out of every residence? Two ways out of the floor, out of the floor you're on? Could you access the window? So one thing I want to kind of circle back on is when we talk to children with the fire safety house, not everyone can jump out their window, right? Or climb out a window.
Doug:And they're not actually really jumping. They're actually, there's a little ladder and they're climbing out. Just so they want to clarify that, right? So, but if you can't get out of your window and you're up high somewhere, we want you to be able to access the window. Could you slide it open?
Doug:Could you push a screen out? Could you signal firefighters or someone that I'm in this suite up here and whether it's a t shirt or whatever, a cloth or a flag, I'm up here and, you know, because firefighters, when they do their size up can see, Hey, you know, on the Seventh Floor, someone's waving a t shirt or whatever, we know that there's people there that are in need. That's an important piece too. Do I have access? And if you're able to get out of a window or a door, we want you to practice that.
Doug:Like, can I get out of the window? Can I get on my door? A lot of people sleep with their door shut. It's not necessary, but it's something that's recommended. Door shut.
Doug:As long as you can hear the alarm. That's the tricky part. Sometimes you shut your door and the alarm's on the other side out in the hallway. Could you hear it? And I think if you practice that, I think you kind of pick up on it.
Doug:Maybe the subconscious when you're sleeping, like that whole, you know, I've trained myself that I hear the alarm outside my door. You want to always test those doors. Like, you want to feel them, are they hot? So, you know, and that'll basically contain a fire from getting in the door, obviously being closed. As well, we want the escape plan to initiate escape plan, which means if I go out the window or door, I stay low under the smoke.
Doug:Like I said, I'm testing doors and then I go to a meeting place. If everyone goes to the same meeting place, then there's that accountability piece for firefighters as they arrive. Like we know everyone's accounted for and we're all here and we're all safe. And that kind of changes perspective for the firefighters on when they go in. Again, they're still always going to do a search regardless, but it's just good to know that we have everyone accounted for in the home or wherever.
Doug:So that piece is really important. And then you call 911 from the meeting place. Like just leaving your personal belongings, things like that is vital. People will try to collect their things, know, that my smoke alarm is going off, there's smoke and I'm going to grab my toy or I'm going to grab my this or that. What's really scary is that even the way there's configuration in the house where maybe my child is sleeping in the bedroom down the hallway.
Doug:What if there's smoke or fire in between that bedroom and my child's room? Are you going to run through smoke and fire? That'd be a really scary thing to happen. A lot of people say, yeah, I would run through a smoke and fire to save my child. But if we have a plan in place, hopefully we don't ever have to do that.
Doug:Hopefully the smoke alarm is the one that initiates the safe exit, the safe egress. And that's what we're after is that smoke alarm is the vital piece. Doesn't get to that point where, hey, there's light smoke in the building, the smoke alarm is going off, we have two ways out, we hit a meeting place, then we call 911 from there.
Natalie:You know, to stick with one final thought with fire rescue, you've seen fires from both sides now. You know, you've you've been the person running into that burning building to to help people, and you're also the one now trying to help prevent them. A final thought on on one thing that you really wish every firefighter could tell families, but maybe doesn't get the chance to?
Doug:Yeah. There's a few different things. That's a good question. One of them is the smoke alarms and escape plan. You know, like our crews go into a lot of homes and we talk we do talk to our officers about just recognizing if someone smoke alarm doesn't look like it's working or there's a blocked exit.
Doug:That's a really big one. It's like, I'm in the home, I got two doors. My back door has got a bunch of stuff in front of it. And I really can only get out my front door and I can't even know, I don't if I can even get out my window. Some windows are sealed units, you know, and in the event of a fire, could you get out the back door?
Doug:So, the escape plan and the smoke alarm is vital from all of us everywhere in the fire department. And then another thing too is some of the resources, right? We have the gift of all these free resources. Like, you, we'll do presentations for groups. We'll have the fire safety house.
Doug:We do the community walkthroughs and just for people to spread the word that, these things are important pieces that we can come and present, talk a little more in detail about what the plan is, or we can have the fire safety official for children. And do they know what to do in the event of a fire? Could they bring that home to the house and could they work on a plan together? Right. So those couple of different pieces there.
Natalie:Great.
Tamara:Thanks Doug for joining us today. I'm sure this conversation will have folks looking a little closer around their house tonight. One last question before you go, and it's something that we ask everybody, doesn't have to be work related, but what's something about Winnipeg that you wish everybody knew?
Doug:Oh, I wish everyone knew that how great Winnipeggers are. You know, I've done some traveling in my time and stuff. And I got, you know, whenever you meet a Winnipegger, it's kind of like we have that common thread, right? Like we know it's a tight community. And like every city, there's always something going on, but Winnipegers are good hearted, know, down to earth folks and the prairie people, but there's a lot of good folks in Winnipeg.
Doug:And one thing I always want to mention too is I always like to give a shout out to the firefighters and first responders, from everyone from the police to the paramedics, all these people doing this job. It's very busy times and there's lots going on and they do a lot of daunting work. When you step away from it, you realize, wow, these people do such good work in helping the community. A lot of times we still have it where you're out and about and people are kind of thanking you for the job you do. It's great.
Doug:I think anyone does it for the thanks, but I always like to thank those people not being in it anymore. I always like to stop by fire halls and talk to crews and things like that. Keep up the good work. You do an amazing job. So I think we have one of the best departments, most experienced departments in North America where we get top level service from the people.
Doug:They really care about citizens. So I wanted to kind of talk about those people.
Natalie:Thank you so much.
Tamara:Well, from fire prevention to a whole range of services, we have them all here at the city.
Natalie:And next month, we actually go visit our cemeteries because we have three. Wow. Like underline a service for all. We are going to talk to Brett Schembach. Really interesting.
Natalie:He's a former planner, and and he really sees the parallels in planning for the living to his new role, planning for the dead.
Tamara:And if there's service that you wanna find out more about or a topic you want us to cover here on this podcast, please let us know. Reach out to us at city-podcast@Winnipeg.ca. Thanks for listening. Bye.
