It’s been a busy two weeks for the local fire service with three major fires, two of those involving cigarettes.
Thankfully no one has been injured, but with winter officially underway and more people turning their heaters on and getting the fire cranking, the public need to be smart in order to prevent further emergencies.
Senior station officer for Nelson, Craig Davies, says it’s been a busy time for an area that is generally “pretty fire safe”.
“The level of fire safety education is pretty high in the Nelson area but we need to make sure we keep it high,” he says. “People certainly need to be pretty vigilant in winter time. Everyone is locked up inside with the fire going. We have a heater rule to make sure everything is a metre away, which is another good one to remember.”
The first of the three major fires in the last two weeks occurred when a 73 year old Stoke man fell asleep with a lit cigarette in his hand. He managed to get out of the house with just smoke inhalation and singed hair, but he did not have a working smoke alarm.
The second was another house fire, this time in Sovereign St in The Wood. A mother and her teenage daughter were taken to Nelson Hospital with smoke inhalation after the daughter had flicked a cigarette butt through the window, but it blew back onto the curtain and caught fire.
They had working smoke alarms and Craig says they did the right thing by closing the door and calling 111, meaning nearly 90 per cent of the house could be saved.
The third fire, which occurred just last week, started at Waterblaster Solutions in Wakatu Estate, and affected a handful of other businesses in the same premises. The cause is yet to be determined.
Craig says it was a concern that two of the three fires had been started by a cigarette. “It’s always a concern to us and people need to get their house keeping in order. If they’re going to smoke, smoke outside.”
Another concern was the amount of people calling the fire station to report a fire. “We’re not here all of the time so if they do see a fire they need to ring 111. That’s something people need to realise.”
