 Hello and welcome to TV30, a production of the Government Information Service. I am Jolene Beset-Joseph. The St Lucia Fire Service will be hosting Fire Prevention Week 2022 from October 9th to the 15th under the theme, Fire Won't Wait, Plan Your Escape. And here to tell us more about the week and other things besides, I am joined by Assistant Divisional Officer, Officer Francis of the St Lucia Fire Service. So first of all, thank you for joining us here today. Thank you. Okay, brilliant. Now, let's start the beginning. Tell me a little bit about Fire Prevention Week. Where does it first ever begin and why is it that we recognize it here in St Lucia? Yes, Fire Prevention Week originated from a devastating fire that happened in the city of Chicago in the USA. In the year 1871, on October 8th, there was that devastating fire that killed over 200 persons and left over one half, well, it destroyed over 100,000 homes and over 2,000 acres was scorched to the ground. That's all the way back then. So since 1922, the National Fire Protection Association, which is an organization in the United States that creates standards for different industries, they have been commemorating Fire Prevention Week. So this year is 100 years since this has been commemorated. Okay, all right. I didn't recognize it. I didn't realize. So it's actually a century older than that right now. It has been. Okay, brilliant. So with it being the 100th anniversary, are there big things going on? Do you know globally to recognize it? Yes. Globally, this has been commemorated. But we thought it fitting to recognize it here in St Lucia as well. We have been doing it, but this year, we want to do it in a grand way. And we have some very great activities that everyone can participate in. And recognizing our history as well, it makes good sense that we recognize this event, this commemoration as well. Okay, brilliant. Okay, now I mentioned in my opening, I mentioned that you actually have a theme this year. Fire won't wait. Plan your escape. Tell me a little bit about the theme. How did you all come up with the theme and why is that the theme for this year? Yes, so every year, the National Fire Protection Association will recognize an element of safety and make it prominent as the theme for that year. It is important to note that that fire in Chicago was as a result of some incident that happened in the home. And this brings to memory something that may have happened here in St Lucia as well. One of the great fires that may have shaped the history of St Lucia and castries, the 1948 fire, may have started in a home. The stories are still going around. We are not sure exactly where and how it started, but persons have recounted that it may have been in a home and there are many stories floating around. But we recognize even here in St Lucia that a majority of the fires that the fire department respond to as a result of, well, eminent in homes. And interestingly, it's low-income homes. Our statistics indicate that approximately 110 or so fires happened in homes. And again, I'm saying it's in low-income homes. Very poor people becoming even poorer. So it behoves us to do something to alleviate that kind of stress on people. Now, I said homes, it's not one person. Likely, the typical home has three persons dwelling there and sometimes more. We go to fires and there are seven persons in that house. And could you imagine the ick it can create, the distress when you go to such a fire and you leave seven persons standing there with just the clothes on their back? Everything is destroyed. Everything is gone. This is a very serious social issue as well for us there in St Lucia. Okay, all right. Now, you touched on the fact that, you know, so many of these things happen within low-income homes. And I understand there was a bit of literature I was reading where the activities that are supposed to take place within the week of the Fire Prevention Week are supposed to be ones that will help educate and bring light to a lot of things that maybe people might need to know. So if you can elaborate for us on what kind of stuff will actually be happening during the week for us so we can understand what things that people can actually take part in so that our audience can understand what it is that they might be able to be a part of as well. Oh, wonderful. Thank you. So this week, which is before Fire Prevention Week, Fire Prevention Week officially starts on the 9th of October. But this week, from the third, we have been attempting to reach St Lucia through media. Right. We've been trying to flood our media, our mass media with information about Fire Prevention Week. So we have been using all the social media outlets and also we hope to use television and radio platform to reach St Lucia. We hope to do it in both in Creole and in English. We are bilingual. Yeah. Interestingly, this is Creole Heritage Month. Yeah, exactly. So we will recognize that Creole, patois, say long one, manu, usi. So we want to be in the homes of every single individual. And as well, most of our low-income persons, the low-income homes, the vulnerable homes, people speak predominantly Creole. So we do not want to leave them out. In fact, they are the primary target of our outreach. So this media outreach will happen for this week prior to Fire Prevention Week. But on Sunday, we have a grand motorcade, all right, and we hope to go through every community, every major community in St Lucia. It's a fire service motorcade. One of a kind. It has never happened before. But we hope it will become a staple every year as part of our Fire Prevention Week. So we want to get into the communities. We want to hand out information. We want to get every firefighter involved. That is the intent of it. We want to reach out to persons to let them know that safety is their business. As an organization, as a government, an arm of government, we have our part to play. But primarily, your safety is your business. Your investment, your home, your property is your business. And so if you allow a fire to devastate it, you will lose. The country will lose. The country will become poorer. But first of all, it will touch your life in many different ways. And so we want to sensitize persons. We want to let persons know that the activity, the wake of activities will be happening. And we want to let them know that we may be coming to the town, to the village, to the community to have events as well. So this is the main thrust of the motorcade. Is there a route for the motorcade? Yes. And the route is also interesting. So we are starting at the Grozile Fire Station. We are starting at 7 a.m. on Sunday morning, Sunday the 9th. The fire station, the units, if there are no emergencies, if there are no fires at the time, as exgencies are permitted, they will lead the motorcade through the village of Grozile. So please bear with us. The noise we will be making is a good noise, a good noise. We will be sounding the trumpet to let you know that fire will not wait. Plan your escape. This is what we will be there to tell you. And so we will go through the village, and we will exit along Marina Street next to the harbour, the fire station, the fire equipment from the Grozile Fire Station, the vehicles may return to the station, and the train will continue down all the way to Corinth. We will go up to Monnier, to Babuna Fire Station, again the Babuna fire truck, the officers were on duty, will lead the parade through parts of Babuna, and we will exit. We will exit, however, from Bocache. We will go down, we want to pass through the masher area, another vulnerable area where fire starts, likely multiple houses will be destroyed. So we want to sound the alarm to these persons as well. Let them know that the week is coming up, and we want, we have lots in store for them, and they should participate as well. So we will go through the area of the masher boulevard, into the city. We hope to make the city secure. We will stop somewhere in town for a short period to have some breakfast because we will be leaving quite early. And I want to speak about our sponsors as well. Okay. They have made our breakfast, breakfast for the participants possible. So I hope you will give me a moment to really let persons know that we have people, the corporate sector, you know, they are really supporting our event. So I want to speak about them as well. So we will leave castries, and we will head down through the east coast to Vfort. Stopping at every community, and also, for example, in January, again, the fire truck and the ambulance will leave once they are available. They will return, and we will continue down to Mikud. We will do the same. We will stop in Vfort for some lunch. Again, we have great sponsors who have made lunch possible. So we can remain on time, people don't disperse because they are some refreshment. And then we will continue around the island. Okay. We will make a round through Vfort. Yeah. Go through the St. Jude's Highway, through Ogier, onto the Vfort Library Highway, into, through the Library, and down to PI, through Swazel, through Fons Saint-Jacques. Okay. Very vulnerable community as well. Yes, yes. Not just to fire, but we know what happened with floods and hurricanes. By the way, we may be speaking about fire, but the fire department responds to disasters in general. Yeah. Yeah. So this is the second season. Yes. We are prone to flooding and the effects of the wind and so forth. We will be speaking about this as well. All right? So we will go through Fons Saint-Jacques. We will circle Souffre town, and onwards to Canaries, through Ansleray, and back to Castries. Brilliant. Okay. Last year. Yes. So we want to pass through every major community. That's fantastic. To herald the word about safety. Okay. And it's your business. And you should prepare yourself for eventualities that may arise. Okay. All right. Okay. And I understand you also have town hall meetings also in the Canada, right? So from the 10th to the 13th, we have, first of all, before the town hall meetings, let's start in the morning, the morning time, we've written to almost every secondary and primary school on the island to host us for just a few minutes, 15 to 20 minutes. We want the fire stations in the communities to impact the students. Yeah. You know, we want to speak to them for just a few minutes about fire safety that they can return home. Yeah. You know, they can speak to their parents. They could make plans to reduce the occurrence of fire. All right. So we want to impact the young people. So that we hope, again, the schools will invite us in. They will listen to our lectures and even the school compound, the school facility can become a safer place as a result of those talks. Right. During the day, between the 10th and the 15th as well, every fire station will have open day. Open day meaning you can walk into a fire station from 10.30 am onwards and the fire officers will be ready to receive you. Oh, wow. That's pretty good. They will share information with you. You will see how we respond to incidents. You will learn much. You will have a peep into, or you will be the whole fire service will be demystified. You will have a peep into the background and see what we do. I understand. And maybe even challenge a firefighter into some fun activity. Hey, okay. That's right. So you can be a firefighter for a day. Hey, three years. So please, we are encouraging solutions to visit. So from 10.30 am onwards, between the 10th and the 15th, the 14th, I can say, the Friday as well, you can visit any fire station around the island and there is a treat prepared for you. Okay. All right. In the evening time, we want to have some town hall meetings. Now, we recognize that fire, again, Creole Heritage Month, fire used to be the response to fire used to be a community thing, where people used to use bucket brigades. By this, they would use buckets of water, pass it on to attempt to extinguish fires. But now we have seven fire stations on the island in the major communities with two fire holes on the airports. All right. So in total, we have nine stations from which we respond to eventualities. And so we want the firefighters in the various stations to work along with the district disaster committees, all right, to have such town hall meetings. So persons can come in, persons could learn more about fire safety. They can learn more about the district disaster committees as well. They are very, these committees are very important to disaster relief, to disaster reduction in communities. Little is known about them. It's unfortunate. Little is known about them. But we want the community to know them, to volunteer with them. This is the arm of Nemo, which is a grass root. The people from those committees are coming from the various communities. And so we want people to know about them as well. But we will also do presentations on the risk of flooding and storms within your community. You need to know about the shelters, who runs the shelters, how the shelters can impact you, can help you. When you can go to a shelter, this is important information that people should know. So we will be speaking about all of those things at the town hall meetings. So this is happening between the 10th and the 30th of October. All right. All right. Now, before we just carry on, I believe it's time for a commercial break. So we're going to take a short break. But when we come back, I know I want to talk about the grand safety fail on the 14th. And also, I'm very interested in the fire alarm installation activity. So let us know a bit about that. However, we'll be back in a few moments. The Ministry of Agriculture and FAO presents World Food Day 2022 CMOS Fiesta, Sunday, October 16th, Four-Door Park, Dennery. This is a food and nutrition strategy. CMOS Fiesta features lots of CMOS products, delicious healthy meals, snacks, nutritious beverages, beauty and health care products, and an array of CMOS brands. It's a family day with a kid zone and a wide range of fun-fill activities for the entire family. Lots of entertainment, cultural performances, the legendary jazz icons Ronald Buhingsen and Jabu Klesi, the big bad D.Y.P band, T. Blacks, Umpa and lots more. Your security is our pledge. Eat to live, not live to eat. Food is health. Health is wealth. Food is essential for living as air is for breathing. Food security for sure. The Ministry of Agriculture has done it again. World Food Day 2022 CMOS Fiesta, Sunday, October 16th, Four-Door Park, Dennery. See you there. Welcome back to TV30. I am Jolene B. Setjoseph. Today, we are discussing the Fire Prevention Week 2022 with Officer Francis. Now, before we went to break, we were talking about the town hall meetings. But as I said to you, I really want to hear about the grand safety fair that's also happening on October the 14th. Tell us a little bit about that. Yes, so on October the 14th, we plan to have a grand safety fair at the Constitution Park in Castris. From about 9.30 to about five o'clock, we will have much on display, including entertainment. All right, so I will not tell you all about the entertainment. You need to come to see, but fire officers would be, should I say, modeling, and it is something to see. OK. But with you will learn something. Yeah. The intent, everything has some lesson in there, some moral in there, and you will learn something by viewing the entertainment, I would say, for you, right? But at that fair, there will be much on display. So whether it be for the business sector, whether it be for homes, you can come and see what you can place within your building, within your home to make it safer. All right? We recognize that most persons believe that finance systems are very exorbitant, very costly, you know? But it is not so. Technology has made it possible that you can, under $1,000 or $1,500, place a very sophisticated system within your business place. For your home, smoke detector or two, with a fire extinguisher, can be adequate to alert you of a fire and also to help you respond adequately. But let me say as well, one of the things that we really want to speak to people about is how to build a safety plan, a fire safety plan, and what you need to put in there, all right? Now, it's very simple, all right? You need to go into your home, look at your home, and ensure that you have two ways out of every room. OK. So go into your bedroom. If a fire were to start in the corridor that you have to utilize on a normal occasion to get out, what would you do? Would you be trapped? So the principle here is you should have two ways out. It may not be two doors, but it can be a door and a window. Incidentally, if I remember well, I'm not that old. But a lot of the older homes used to have a back door. And that back door used to be from a bedroom, actually. Today, we don't do that. But they understood the threat of fire back then and what it could cost them. As well, they used to have the vet who's in, separate from their home, separate from the house. They understood the consequence of fire, a fire which went out of control, would destroy everything. So knowing that the fire is likely to start in the kitchen, they would have it separate. And whatever they did in there, should the fire start, it will consume the vet who's in, but their house would remain safe. They would have a place to lay their head. But today, I mean, modern times, we want to have the top-of-the-line kitchen. It's within our house. We use LPG, cooking gas, which, I mean, it can do so much for you, the convenience to it. But you misuse it and it will take away your home. It will take away your life. Electricity, it's a very good thing as well. But you misuse it, you can get electrocuted. And fires can start as a result of it as well. So the intent here is that you should know that you should have two ways out of every living space. Now, when I say living space, it's the area of your home that is possible for you to come or sleep. So you can do that in your bedroom, in your living room, in your study. Even in your dining room, however, your kitchen and your bathroom are not really living spaces. You go in there for a specific purpose and you live. But should you have a number of persons at your home, it's possible to come for a short period in those other areas. And so you should think of having at least two ways out of every one of those areas. So as I said, bedroom, a door, and a window can be. But if you have the people within your home, how possible is it for you to exit out of a window? So you may have to put a ladder. It may be a rope ladder, but you may have to make preparation for that exit. Now, what type of window do you have? Does it have security bars on there? Can it open all the way to allow you to exit? These are things that you need to consider. Because you're preparing for the possibility that something like this may happen. I have gone to houses where fires started and the home owners would recount how they got persons out. And one lady was telling me she actually dropped her baby out through a window for a neighbor to catch. And this is how she saved her life and the baby's life. Because fire had totally cut her way of escape through the kitchen. Because this is usually where you exit. Through a corridor, into a kitchen, and out. So again, you need to think about why you place your cooker. Because if you have one door, one final door out of your house, and your cooker is next to that door, likely the great possibility is the fire means that if it's from cooking, near the door. That's where you'll see the fire. That's where the smoke will be coming. You may not want to go in that direction. But where else can you go? Because you have not made a preparation to get out from an alternative source. So half to is out. The next thing is having smoke alarms installed. Smoke alarms saves lives. So smoke gets in there and the alarm would go off. If you're sleeping, when you're sleeping, you're like dead. You don't know. You're not conscious of what's happening around you. The smoke alarm would awake you. And then you can make an escape, or you can now use a fire extinguisher to put out the fire. So these are elements you should have in your plan. Again, discuss it with your family. Everyone should know the plan. And as well, if you leave the house, where should you go to? Every person should know exactly where the family will gather. Because what has happened again is persons leave the house, they leave the area of threat, and they go wandering around. The parents come out, and all the siblings comes out and says, where is my loved one? Where is my brother? Where is my sister? The parents are asking, where are my children? And do you know what's the next part you think that will come to their mind? That person is still inside. And so many persons have risked their life to return into the house looking for that loved one. And they may get burnt, they may lose their lives because they did not have a place to assemble outside. And this has happened many times. The stories have been recounted many times. So persons who have gone inside, and that loved one was outside. So again, part of the plan should be we leave the house. We meet at the central area, at the area where we are safe. Everybody's accounted for. Someone may return inside and help get some things out. This is what happens in San Lucia. But again, do not forget to call the fire department. We don't smell smoke and come running. Someone needs to call. And the number is 911. 911 will get your help. It will go to our central dispatch. The information will come to the fire department. It's also good to know the number for the fire station near you. Every fire station has a number apart from 911. It's a good idea to know that number as well. So in the event you are trying to call 911 and something happens, redundancy. You know the station crosses to you. You can call that number directly and as well get assistance. But you need to have a plan. Okay, brilliant. Okay, thank you so much for that. Because one of my questions was gonna be, you know, moving away from the event, but could you actually give us some tips? So thank you for that because you touched on that already. That's brilliant. Okay, before we run out of time, however, there's a couple of things because I'm seeing that time is running out. But there's a couple of things that I just wanted to touch on as well. The fire alarm installation for 1,000 homes. I would like to just, could you just give us a little bit of a background into what exactly is the fire department doing in regards to that? Yes, again, as we recognize, those fires are happening vulnerable homes. Now we want to be able to help reduce the risk in those homes because we recognize in this economy, people will just get even poorer. You know, the world is in a spin and it doesn't look like things will get better. And poor people will get poorer, and especially with the statistics we have now, the church directory that, you know, the number of fires in homes, in vulnerable homes will only increase. So we want to do something active. Actively, we want to reduce on that risk. And so we want to install smoke alarms in as many of those vulnerable homes as possible. Now you may be asking, how will we pick those vulnerable homes? But we have ways of doing this. For example, the Ministry of Equity has officers who would have details of who is less vulnerable, who is more vulnerable within the various communities. We will work with the district disaster committees and those social transformation officers to find out who are the persons who are really in need of those devices. And we intend to go around the island between the 15th, right after Fire Prevention Week, and the 22nd of December to install those detectors in those homes. Now, this is not coming directly from the fire department. Well, we will be the ones installing it, but our corporate St. Lucia has done much to help with this. As well, the parliamentary representatives or the various communities are working along with us to reduce the risk. So we are working with St. Lucia to reduce the risk in St. Lucia. Okay, brilliant. Now, again, leading on to, like, before we run out of time, but I did promise you a word about your sponsors. Oh, yes, our sponsors are very important to us. And we hope they will continue in time to come. So, yes, we have IBS. IBS have come in a very big way with the fire department. Not only that they're sponsoring most of our events, they're actually working with us to see it through. They are giving their time, their effort, and a number of them have come into the fire department to help us strategize and to make this thing a reality. So I want to thank IBS a big way, even a very big way. IBS as well is Innovative Business Solutions. So I want to see their full name. They're working with us in a big way. We in Germany then has provided breakfast for our firefighters for the morning. We are thanking them in a very big way as well. Sandals Resorts promise that they will provide us with some detectors as well, rumco plastics for providing the cutlery to house the food. Coconut Bay for lunch. Goddard Catering for lunch. Lucy Lake has provided a number of smoke lamps where we are indeed thankful for them. We do want a little brewery water and some drinks. Bank of San Lucia for more detectors. We are grateful for this. Blue Waters, the name stand, you know synonymous with water. We are thankful for this because it's going to be a long day. The distillers as well. Drinks and water, Excel signs. We want to put a big banner in town. So look up on Bridge Street. I want to see this banner thing of Excel signs. But this banner will tell you more about Fire Prevention Week. Ice Factory, massive stores for providing the humpers. The Cassio City Council for making the constitution pack available to us. Mommy's Cuisine for providing food as well, Forest Springs for more water and all the parliamentary representatives of the various districts who are helping us in making this thing a reality. We found them in such a very big way. And we hope they will be with us as we continue in 2022. This is a start of a drive. But we hope to make homes in San Lucia safe. This is the intent because fires make everyone fall. And it may never come to you, but I'm sure you know of someone who has been impacted severely by fire. So we hope to make this thing something of the past indeed. Okay, well Officer Francis, our time has run out, but thank you, thank you, thank you so much for being here because not only have you told us about the event, but you've actually even educated us in regards to what we need to do for Fire Prevention Week on our own homes. And I'm very grateful for that. So again, thank you for being here. I hope the thing's a success. And I also will be looking out to see exactly what is going on for the week. Because I think I would like to come over to a fire station myself and see, you know, a little bit inside. That would be nice, that would be nice. We'd be happy to have you. All right, okay. However, it's time for us to go here at TV30. Thank you for joining us. See you soon. Bye-bye.