HIFR has been pretty busy over the last few weeks. Despite the extreme fire hazard and the hundreds of fires elsewhere in the province, all of our calls have been medical. That doesn’t mean that we can let our guard down, though. I’ve heard of three recent local incidents that could have resulted in a fairly large scale response.
- Around the time that the fire hazard went to extreme, I got a call from a resident whose chainsaw exhaust set fire to the log he was bucking up. He had water standing by and was able to extinguish it himself, but the event was an eye-opener into how easily things catch on fire in these conditions.
- An HIFR member was driving by another resident’s workshop when he smelled smoke. As he was investigating, flames began licking out of the floorboards of the shop. The fire was most likely caused by a blob of hot steel that came from a welding job over an hour earlier. He was able to put out the fire with an extinguisher and saved the shop before any significant damage occurred and before the fire spread to the nearby forest.
- A BC Hydro employee who happens to be a volunteer with Chemainus Fire was following another vehicle along a Hornby driveway with tall grass down the center. The exhaust system of the car ahead of her lit the tall grass on fire without the driver noticing. Our volunteer was carrying a fire extinguisher in her vehicle and was able to put out the grass fire before it spread to the field beside the driveway.
Here are some takeaways from those events:
- Be vigilant
- Carry an extinguisher
- Avoid using chainsaws or other high fire-risk tools
- Keep the driveway grass short (use a nylon string trimer)
first of all, you must have a fire extinguisher install in your house for small or little fire if you have a fire extinguisher in your house you must be safe from big loss if the extinguisher does not work the call the fire degrade