Emergency Preparedness

The FireSmart Home Partners Program is designed to engage homeowners in voluntary wildfire mitigation activities by offering a professional home assessment with property-specific recommendations.

The assessment process accurately evaluates a home and property for wildfire exposure, while engaging the homeowner in their unique risk and ways to reduce it. Check out some examples assessments: Whistler example - RDCK example.

Get your Free Assessment

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Watch FireSmart Introduction Video

Keep fire safety in mind as temperatures drop!

Big White Fire Department is urging everyone to keep fire safety in mind as the temperatures outside continue to drop.

There are some simple things people can do to stay fire safe during the colder months:

• Have all fuel-burning appliances inspected annually by a registered fuel contractor. Go to COSafety.ca to find a contractor near you.
• Keep chimneys and intake/exhaust vents for furnaces and heating appliances free of debris, ice and snow accumulations to reduce the risk of carbon monoxide (CO) build-up from inefficient combustion.
• Burn dry, well-seasoned wood in fireplaces and wood stoves to reduce the risk of excessive creosote build-up in chimneys.
• Allow ashes from your fireplace or woodstove to cool before emptying them into a metal container with a tight-fitting lid. Keep the container outside.
• Keep space heaters at least one metre (3 feet) away from anything that can burn, including curtains, upholstery and clothing, and keep a minimum of 18” clear space around baseboard heaters.
• Replace worn or damaged electrical wires and connections on vehicles and extension cords and use the proper gauge extension cord for vehicle block heaters.
• Consider using approved timers for vehicle block heaters rather than leaving heaters on all night.
• Ensure that vehicles are not left running inside any garage or building.
• Ensure there is a working smoke alarm on every storey and outside all sleeping areas of your home.
• Install CO alarms to alert you to the presence of this deadly gas.

Big White Fire Department reminds everyone that the British Colombia Fire Code requires smoke alarms to be installed on every storey of your home and outside all sleeping areas. It is recommended that Carbon monoxide alarms are required outside all sleeping areas if the home has a fuel-burning appliance, a fireplace or an attached garage. 

We all know that smoke alarms and saves lives, but only working smoke alarms saves lives, therefore it is essential that you check their operation by testing them on a monthly basis, you can do this by pressing the “Test” button to ensure that the alarm sounds.

For those of you that have smoke alarms that are powered through your house electrical system, look for a green light, this will let you know that your alarm has power, and for those of you that have battery powered alarms it is important that you change your batteries regularly, so why not set a note on your calendar for when the the clocks change in the spring and fall  to change  the batteries in your smoke alarm as well? Smoke alarms should be replaced every 10 years, and if you are purchasing battery powered alarms in the near future, consider purchasing alarms with a 10 year battery life. Don’t forget to recycle your old alarm! 

Here are a couple of useful links:

• Safety tips for smoke alarms
• Smoke alarm quiz- Test your knowledge!

Electrical safety in the home.

We all rely on electricity in our daily lives, however electricity can be extremely dangerous, overloaded power bars and sockets, and that damaged extension cord we were going to replace and never got round to are just a few examples. In this modern world our children accept everything, we teach them to safely cross the road, but do we even think to teach them about electrical safety? I have attached a fun booklet below that we can use to start to teach children about electrical safety

-> View Nico the Ninja Workbook

Smoke Alarm Testing:

If you do not have a functional smoke alarm, we will replace faulty or missing batteries or install a new battery operated smoke alarm at no cost during the free smoke alarm safety check. Stocks are limited so book your free check now! This service is carried out free of charge to anyone that lives at Big White. A limited number of batteries and battery operated smoke alarms have been donated to the fire department.

Should you have any questions regarding smoke alarms, or any fire safety issues please contact us.

Please see the following products and links below about product safety information and/or recalls.

• Recall of Certain Lochinvar Gas Boilers and Combi Gas Boilers
• Recall of Certain Hand Sanitizers That May Pose Health Risks
• HP Notebook Computer and Mobile Workstation Battery
• UL and ULC Warn of Counterfeit UL Marks on Fire Extinguishers (Release 19PN-11)
• Kidde Fire Extinguishers with Plastic Handles (Manufucatured between January 1, 1973 and October 25, 2015)

Currently under reconstruction.

Please check back soon, or contact Deputy Chief Carlile if you have any questions.

bwfdprevention@rdkb.com

For updates and information related to emergencies in our region and emergency preparedness please follow the link below:

https://emergency.rdkb.com/

For recommendations and tools for emergency preparedness from the province of British Columbia please follow this link:

https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/safety/emergency-management/preparedbc

For information on power outages, outage maps, and how to be prepared in the event of a power outage please follow this link:

https://www.fortisbc.com/safety-outages/preparing-for-emergencies/power-outages

Kids, visit sparky.org to enjoy some fun fire-safety related games, stories and cartoons.