By Tyler Wright
Glenn Hickingbotham, 2nd Lieutenant at the Monbulk Fire Brigade, is advising Dandenong Ranges residents regularly test and change the batteries in their smoke alarms after CFA crews attended a recent house fire.
Monbulk and Kallista CFA crews were called to reports of a house fire on Emerald-Monbulk Road in Monbulk at 10:23am on Sunday 3 July.
Two CFA vehicles attended the scene to discover an electric couch had caught fire, and the scene was deemed safe at 10:31am.
Glenn said crisis was averted due to working smoke alarms inside the property.
“There’s no doubt that for this incident…that the smoke alarms probably averted something that could have been a lot worse, because they were asleep and [the alarm] woke them up,” Glenn said.
“The key message – and it’s literally a bumber sticker the CFA have made on the back of trucks – is ‘smoke alarms save lives.”
According to CFA and Fire Rescue Victoria (FRV) data, Victorian firefighters have responded to more than 32,000 residential fires across the state in the past decade, and 72 per cent of fatal fires starting in people’s living rooms and sleeping areas.
“The messaging changed from the CFA a number of years ago – it used to just be your hallway or common areas of the home (loungeroom, dining and a hallway outside a door) – but if a hallway is shut to a bedroom, which it often is [and] any fire that starts in [the bedroom], the detector in the hallway will not activate in time,” Glenn said.
Glenn also said laptops and phones should be placed on a cold, hard surface while charging instead of laying the devices under pillows or doonas.
Alarms should be tested at least monthly by “simply holding the [device] button” and batteries should be changed at least annually.
“The lifespan of a detector is only 10 years – so a lot of people have old detectors and they don’t realise that once it’s 10 years old you have to bin it and replace it,” Glenn said,
Since 1 August 1997, Victorian law states that smoke alarms (complying with Australian Standards AS3786) must be installed in all homes, units, flats and townhouses.
It is the responsibility of all owners and landlords to install working smoke alarms, but Glenn the responsibility of testing the devices and changing batteries should also lie with tenants.
“House fires are more generally in Winter, and the reason is people dry clothes in front of heaters…so there should be a one metre gap between the clothes rack and any kind of log fire or radiator-type heater,” he said.
For more information on smoke alarms, you can visit https://www.cfa.vic.gov.au/plan-prepare/fires-in-the-home/smoke-alarms
