Pretoria – In a bid to speedily respond to shack fires, City authorities have placed 500 smoke detector alarms at Plastic View informal settlement, which recently experienced a devastating fire that destroyed many homes.
The City of Tshwane on Friday said the smoke detector alarms were installed in partnership with the fire services directorate of the Gauteng Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (CoGTA).
“The pilot project is sponsored by Santam and involves smoke detector alarms being installed at the informal settlement, which has been known to experience devastating fires, often with lives lost,” said City of Tshwane spokesperson Thabo Mabaso.
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Community leaders at the settlement, together with Ward 91 Councilor Henning Viljoen, welcomed officials from the City’s Emergency Services Department, the City of Ekurhuleni Emergency and Disaster Management Services, Lesedi Fire Department and the City of Johannesburg Disaster and Emergency Management Services.
Mabaso said 113 firefighting students from the City of Tshwane Emergency Services Department Training Academy and their instructors helped install the fire detectors.
The students worked with officials from the fire and emergency services and CoGTA to install the detectors in predetermined households, businesses, and early childhood development centres at the informal settlement.
“Officials took time to orientate and educate the beneficiaries on how to escape their dwellings if the detector is activated, how to reset the detector if the fire is contained and extinguished in its incipient stages, and to immediately call the emergency services by dialling the toll-free 107 emergency number,” explained Mabaso.
The recipients were also made aware that smoking cigarettes or making open fires inside dwellings would trigger the detector’s alarm.
“The Emergency Services Department will continue to empower the community by means of fire and life safety awareness campaigns,” Mabaso said.
Councilor Viljoen thanked everyone for “organising an improvement project for the community”.
He further stressed that “good information to the community is what will make the project a success”.
