Fears of a smoke alarm crisis among non-English speaking Australians
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A local councillor is on a mission to improve fire safety in his diverse south-west Sydney community, where recent surveys indicate 80 per cent of the homes do not have working smoke alarms.
In Councillor George Zakhia’s diverse community of Canterbury-Bankstown in Sydney’s southwest, more than 40 per cent of residents were born overseas and a quarter of them cannot speak English.
He said he was shocked when the results of an anonymous survey showed that eight out of every 10 homes in Lakemba do not have working smoke alarms.
“There’s an anonymous survey that’s done within our city, which is Lakemba, and believe it or not, 80 per cent of the actual city, they don’t have one or they’ve got one that doesn’t work,” he said.
“This is the barrier that we’ve got, that we need to actually work on – especially in different languages, even in different ethnic newspapers, just to get the word out and say ‘Hang on guys, we’re here to support, we’re here to help, there’s obligations landlords have to actually comply with, and we’re here to support you.”
Councillor Zakhia knows the link between the high number of non-English speakers in his area and the low level of fire-safety knowledge is no coincidence.
“We’ve got a lot of migrants and what they use overseas as some kind of a heating source is different from what we actually use in this country,” he said.
“Some people actually use charcoal, actually inside the house, to warm up – this is like a bomb waiting to explode – so it really got me going.”
This came as no surprise to Melbourne’s Metropolitan Fire Brigade, which runs the innovative Flames for Teens program.
It teaches newly arrived teenagers about fire safety through English language schools.
The teens, often relied upon by their parents to figure out ‘how things work’ in Australia, then spread the word to their communities.
Leading firefighter and multicultural liaison officer Mark Crowe teaches the program, and said it all started after new migrants were identified as one of the most at-risk groups for fire danger.
“We have a strong program in Melbourne that aims at all primary school students in the metropolitan district, and the thinking behind it is that these students, when they come to Melbourne, haven’t had this fire education program in primary school,” he said.
After running the program for 15 years now, Mr Crowe and his team have solid evidence that it works.
“We do a pre-survey and post-survey of the students randomly, but what we find out is they don’t know the message of triple-0, which is fair enough having coming out when they have, they don’t know our teachings on home escape planning and also on smoke alarms – so smoke alarms is our biggest message of the lot,” he said.
Like Councillor Zakhia over the border in Sydney, Mr Crowe said one of the hardest messages to get across is that all tenants have the right to working smoke alarms.
“A lot of people in general in Australia are unsure of the legislation, and the point is it is the landlord’s responsibility to supply and maintain a working smoke alarm,” he said.
“Many migrants don’t understand, don’t know that message, and don’t know their rights when they check out their smoke alarm or realise that there’s a smoke alarm in the room, that it is the landlord who must keep that thing working for them.”
In NSW, installing and maintaining smoke alarms is also the number one priority for local fire brigades working with at-risk communities.
Fire and Rescue’s Chief Superintendent Michael Morris said his team has spent the past few years establishing the Home Fire Safety Checks program, an initiative that targets at-risk communities like Councillor Zakhia’s, where cultural or language barriers can create safety risks.
“Quite often, new migrants can be scared of uniforms or have a perception that Fire and Rescue NSW charge for our services, and we need to make it clear that we are here to help and that we don’t charge for our response to fires, so there is no impediment to calling your local fire station or calling 000 if you have a fire emergency,” Chief Superintendent Morris said.
His team is now working with multicultural organisations across the state to get in-language information kits out to at-risk communities.
There are about 21 deaths each year in NSW as a direct result of home fires, but Chief Superintendent Morris said half of those fatalities could have been prevented if those homes had working smoke alarms.
“Only one in three homes are regularly testing their smoke alarms and unfortunately the smoke alarms can be affected by dust and their age et cetera and they do need to be replaced every ten years,” he said.
“Only a working smoke alarm increases your chance of survival when you do have a house fire, and unfortunately in the modern home environment, a small fire can take hold and in a matter of just minutes can completely fill your home with deadly smoke.”
His team has published fire safety materials in about 30 languages, all of which can be found on the New South Wales Fire and Rescue website.
Article source: https://www.smh.com.au/world/africa/how-much-would-you-pay-for-a-moon-rock-20181011-p5093i.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_world
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