BLAINE, Minn. – (Sept. 17, 2015) – Apartment fires can spread quickly can often become deadly. The SBM Fire Department is working with apartment managers in a first of its kind program to enhance prevention measures for apartment dwellers.
“It’s about recognizing where our risks are. We have a lot of people in apartments and we want to make sure prevention makes it to them,” said Becky Booker from the SBM Fire Department.
This week at an apartment fire academy several apartment managers heard from a variety of speakers. The goal of the program is to get everyone working together to make apartment living safer.
“What this basically comes down to is 360 fire fighting where we have the fire fighter involved, we have prevention involved, we have the code and the management of the apartment, and we get the residents involved. So, we’re all working together as a team because if we’re just working on the outside we still have that key piece in the middle of what really is causing the fire which is people’s behaviors,” said Booker.
Kitchen fires and balcony fires are some of the most common in apartments. And with thousands of people living in apartments in the SBM area want to work to change common behaviors such as grilling and smoking on balconies.
“I believe we have 17 apartments so we have well over 2,000 people that are in apartments in our three cities that we cover and we’ve had some near misses, some very close near misses and that has to be prevented. We can’t let it go any further. We got to stop it at the stage of changing behaviors, ” said Booker.
The apartment fire academy is just one of the many prevention efforts taken up by the SBM Fire Department. To learn more about fire prevention click here.
